Stealing Flowers

by Edward St Amant

  My cheeks flushed and I had a sudden irrational hatred of them. Stan had returned my book about them and so I gave it to Mary. That weekend, Peter Burgess came to supper, with, of all people, Rick Edwards, the author of The Family of Lies and other books on American cults. He looked about fifty years of age. He was short, black, wore a moustache and outdated sideburns, and worse still, antiquated horn-rimmed glasses, and his clothes looked laughable, as though secondhand, but though his attire appeared transparently unimaginative, I saw that his bold dark eyes focused on everyone with intelligence.

  “Why has it taken so long to meet with you?” Mary asked.

  I had no idea that they’d been trying. “On the contrary,” he said in a rather defensive and charged voice, “most people wait a month, one week is nothing. I’m very busy.”

  Una served drinks, Rick Edwards took ice water and everyone followed suit, and returned to the kitchen, and perhaps only a minute later, sat with us; when the five of us were all set, Rick open up his briefcase. “I read the letter you received from your daughter. It’s pretty typical of a letter from kids in this situation, at least from the Jesus Cults.”

  The hopefulness left Mary and Stan’s faces, dashed perhaps by his business like manner and his tone of voice. “Mr. Burgess says that you are a deprogrammer?” Stan said. “We’ve read The Family of Lies. What are the dangers to our daughter?”

  His hand scratched his chin as though he considered the two questions separately. “You’re jumping ahead of yourself.” He looked into our eyes with little sympathy.

  Mary opened her purse, brought out several photographs of Sally and passed them to Rick. He studied the pictures and sighed. “Your daughter is truly beautiful. You have a right to be nervous, Mrs. Tappet. I don’t mean to alarm you more than you already are, but your daughter’s greatest danger is being used for sex, raped, and reduced to sell her body. With The Family of Truth, beautiful women are often reduced to the lowest of the low.”

  Stan sat on the edge of the luxurious sofa chair. “Mr. Edwards, don’t you see that you’re upsetting my wife?”

  Mary looked at Stan and frowned. “What can we do to get her out?” she said. “We’re not here to have a discussion on the philosophic wisdom of your methods. We know our daughter better than anybody and we realize she’s in danger. Tell us about deprogramming!”

  “That I know of, there are no dangers with deprogramming. Of not doing it, there are many: Malnutrition, severe poverty, insanity, violence, rape, the list of problems is long. The Family of Truth pretty much operates illegally under legal sanctions of religious freedom in America. Their victims are completely brainwashed.”

  Mary breathed in and for a second turned ashen. She leaned forward and sipped her ice water. I must say, she looked as pale as I ever had seen her. “There’s no question here of them using what could be any reasonable version of what you mean by free will,” Rick continued, “the kids stay in cults because of programming. That’s where I come in. I boldly go and abduct the children, accompanied by parents and other family members and rescue them. For this, I charge no fee, but I ask for contributions to continue my fight against the cults.”

  “We’ll drive straight up to that farm in Denver and abduct her?” Una asked with what I interpreted to be a little alarm.

  “You could never get in there at Woodlands without permission. Vicious guard dogs, eight-feet high wire fences and armed security stand in your way. What we’d have to do is arrange a meeting with Sally, hopefully away from Woodlands, but if necessary, there. Stan or Mary would have to write a letter which I would help them create. You’d tell your daughter that you wish only to see her to assure yourself that she’s safe, and if you would be permitted by the Family, to contribute financially towards their welfare. It’s the offer of money which will tempt the Elders to risk her release so as to meet you.”

  I knew if I didn’t judge him by looks, he seemed to be a true-life modern-day hero. I desperately wanted to believe it, but he certainly didn’t look or dress the part. “Isn’t it possible to simply buy her back?” Stan asked.

  Rick passed both Mary and Stan a collection of pages printed on both sides. “That wouldn’t be possible, although they would certainly take your money. These pages will explain what will be required of you if you wish to go ahead with deprogramming your children. It’ll take some time and money. You must cover all my costs. There are two days for the abduction itself, three or four days for the deprogramming, and then, I strongly suggest a holiday for the family somewhere without churches, bibles, telephones and escape routes. Backsliding is sometimes a big problem.” He paused, looking up at us. I saw that he made sure that we all knew he meant business. “I’m born and bred Baptist myself,” he continued, “Most of the kids that fall to the Jesus Cults, come from a religious background.”

  “Stan says that he’s a Frisbeeterian,” Mary said. “I guess that means he’s a nonbeliever for the most part. I’m a Catholic. Sally was raised as such, although, she has never shown an inclination to become religious before and I’ve never pushed it. She went to church with her schoolmates sometimes. Christian is adopted. His mother we think may have been Jewish, but we’re not really sure.”

  “I’m a Frisbeeterian too,” I added, I had become an unbeliever in Jesus since the abduction, but received no laughs, only a smile from Peter and a frown from Una.

  “Rick writes that atheists and Black people are immune,” Peter interjected.

  Rick looked over. “I’m sure that’s not a direct quote. They take few Blacks and I’ve never heard of a case of an articulate atheist joining a cult. Most cult members are white, middle class, have a religious background, especially Catholic, and are between twelve and thirty. They do steal minors if they can, but the under aged are easier to retrieve. The law, in that case, is on our side.”

  “What does that mean?” Mary asked.

  “Mrs. Tappet, deprogramming borders on the illegal. The police will sometimes look the other way if the abduction is being done by the parents, but it carries that problem with it–”

  “You mean we could be–”

  “Arrested? Not likely.”

  “So, some of your assistants and associates are former cult members,” Stan asked. I knew he was changing the topic because Mary wouldn’t broach anything even a slightest bit illegal.

  “Most of them were members of cults; Hare Krishna, Sun Mying Moon, the Unification Church and others. I don’t know if you’ve heard of these. They are the worst offenders in brainwashing, but I have removed cult members from all sorts of cults and many other organizations use brainwashing techniques: The Scientologists, Transcendental Meditation, Divine Light Mission and the Brotherhood, to name just a few. You could meet with some of them if you wanted. Several who help us, were former members of The Children of Moses before the cult changed their name to The Family of Truth.” Mary had an expression of growing concern. “I know what you are thinking. You’re saying to yourself that your daughter is an adult of legal age and abducting her seems like such a transgression against democratic sensibilities.”

  I saw that his big brown eyes were now sympathetic but that he wasn’t going to soften it up for Mary. “The Family of Truth has no such democratic sensibility,” he continued forcefully.

  “How can all of this be true?” Mary asked. “How can they be operating legally in United States?”

  “Who is to say what is religious and what is a sham? No laws exist on any of this and they may never. The ones which do exist are in our way, not behind our efforts. Like I’ve said, law-enforcement-agencies feel reluctant to interfere when it is a parent abducting their own teenage child out of a cult. This is our only single ally.”

  “Sally went of her own free-will on that bus,” Mary said. “Is that what you are saying? And that she was not really abducted, but was brainwashed? Furthermore, that against her will, we should abduct and forcibly deprogram her.”

  Rick Edwards looked over at Peter for a
second and returned his focus to Mary with a half-frown. “Your daughter got on that bus willingly, but if she’d been told that she would be harangued, would have no food, little to drink and hardly any sleep for the next thirty to forty-eight hours, would she have gone?”

  Mary and Stan again exchanged glances. “It sounds so sinister. You think she’s weak willed.”

  Rick laughed. “I don’t know her, but that has nothing to do with it. If she’d been told she was going to be inundated with hateful messages from constantly screaming loudspeakers and programmed with individual, experienced councilors, who are well fed and rested, just as they are exhausted and hungry, would she have gotten on that bus? If she had been forewarned that she’d be indoctrinated with long public lectures and forced to fill out applications in the wee hours of the morning, would she have gone? If she had been told she was going to be made to hate her parents, to feel inadequate and to feel numb to pain and love, I’ll guarantee she’d not have gotten on that bus. I believe in God, and after I spent two days at a property in Santee, San Diego with The Children of Moses, I came to believe in Satan too. Imagine answering some mundane question hundreds of times in one day. A question like, ‘Don’t you want to serve the Lord?’”

  “I can verify, every word he says,” Peter said. “It’s all true.”

  “What they really intend to say when they ask it, is, ‘Don’t you want to serve our leader, Moses Truth?’ Your daughter was abducted into a cult of hate. You shouldn’t forget that. I have a deprogramming to do this week, you are all welcome to observe. The moment that the poor victim looks into their parents eyes with true recognition and begins to cry, professing their apologies and love, that’s the most beautiful moment of my work. If there are doubts about the evil of this cult, then I suggest you read these.” He passed us two more books and assorted documents. “If we do anything together, you must both be behind it. So think it over carefully and let me know.”

  “In your deprogramming,” Stan asked. “Do you always succeed?”

  “Many things can and have happened, but backsliding is most often the case in the failures. There’s what I call a floating time immediately following a deprogramming, but there were a few times when we were unsuccessful in the abductions themselves. The cults know me now and do everything in their power to prevent abduction. A parent therefore almost never sees his or her son or daughter alone. Usually, four or five of the cult members are close by, even when they are off their property, but I’ve become good at abductions and if everybody follows my instructions, things usually go without a hitch. Have Sally’s friends come around to the house when you bring her home, if you decide to go ahead. This helps. The cult has snapped your daughter’s personality and grafted on a new, shallow, bible-spouting, impersonal one. So shallow in fact that some of these children go insane. Snapping them back for me is easy. I’m almost always successful in this. The parents are the ones who fail by underestimating what has occurred. They are assured by the tearful ‘thank yous,’ the genuine sorrow for what their children have done and the ‘I love yous,’ that their kids are safely out of the woods. In part, after deprogramming, it is initially like withdrawing from a drug addiction. A brainwashed person divorces the feeling-self from the reasoning, thinking-self, and the new uncritical, unquestioning, ‘cult’-self, spouts what it’s programmed. The new logic is circular. There’s an answer to everything as long as they stay inside the loop. It is a horrible thing to loose one’s mind, but it is also sort of like a holiday of bliss: Free from all turmoil and worry that thinking brings about. For most of these kids, it takes about a year after deprogramming to be completely safe from the allure of the cult that they were in.”

  I fell in love with his authoritative voice and often locked into his dark bold eyes. He was like Stan, but instead of doing a market thing, he was doing a spiritual thing. In the next few days, I spent many hours with Isaac at the office. Stan was in Europe and Mary and Una had gone to Jamaica to pick up Una’s mother. The Sunday after Clara returned, the whole mansion had been recently made wheelchair-accessible, Una served a special supper for us, that is, Isaac, Andy, Stan, Mary, Clara and me. She prepared three of her most famous Jamaican dishes, Dolphin Fish Pepper Surprise, Island Veggie with Rice and Fresh Pineapple, and Stinging Star-fruit Sherbet. Even Clara ate some solid food, although she was very frail and I felt exceedingly sorry for her.

  “I’ve been planning this dish all week,” Una said as she sat to the table with us. “Wait until you taste it, you’ll join Una’s cult.” We laughed. “How many parents can say they’ve lived long enough to abduct their own children?” She rose to toast. “To a successful abduction.”

  We laughed again, especially Andy who thought she was a better comedian than even a cook. “I’m forever grateful to see that our housekeeper is still insane,” Stan said. “It bodes as well for our future as it has for our past.”

  All day Mary and he had been working on a letter to Sally which they hoped would give us access to her.

  “It’s bad to be done by such a thing,” Una said, serving us and pouring the wine, “I wonder if a person is free to give up his freedom . . . no, I wouldn’t say that. Would anyone willingly do that? I’m certain my Sally wouldn’t, but I’ve heard about it before. Young people hate their life and break off, and they’ve no grasp of the ill they’ll face. We’ve all been reading about cults. At Jonestown, over nine hundred people died. I bet that many parents and relatives of those people, are kicking themselves for not fighting many years before and going and dragging them out. Mary and Stan, you are right in this; let’s go get our Sally back!”

  “They discipline children with sticks,” Mary said, “then they lock them in dark closets until they stop crying. After the children turn two years old, they’re forced to sit cross-legged for hours meditating on bible stories. If these people are not worth fighting against, then who are?”

  “I’m so sorry that I’ve been distracted with mother, but I’m here now and ready to cook and clean, and to even scuffle with Moses himself. Mr. Stan, read us your letter to our Sally.”

  “Dear Patience Hosanna,” he began, “September 12, 1979. Your mother and I rejoiced in the news that you found a way to serve the Lord. We realize you are of legal age and are an adult whose views must be respected. However, we beg of you to let us see you. You profess in your letter that you are very happy. We just want to be assured. Please let us visit. Your mother and I would also like to contribute to help you financially in your new life. We would like to bring you your things and meet your new family as well, Love, Stan.”

  We all decided that it was good and Stan mailed it that night and it was two weeks before we got an official reply from the family, and they gave us permission to visit the Denver compound on Sunday afternoon October 13.

  Stan contacted Rick Edwards and he agree to meet with us in Denver on the Saturday before. We were to meet in a motel diner, The Trip Stop, a place near Watkins, off Highway 70. We flew Tappets’ Lear jet to the Denver International Airport with Stan and I at the helm, and by noon, we’d gathered quite a group, a total of ten, to this small quiet clean restaurant. Una went and saw the owner, and in her incredible friendly and bold manner, offered to help serve our group, which he accepted.

  With Andy’s help, Una served us cold drinks and fresh fruit.

  Rick, with my parents’ permission, had brought a reporter, Mulligan Shirer, a short petite white journalist with rich wavy black hair, weighing no more than ninety-five pounds and working for a religious magazine doing a story on deprogramming.

  Peter Burgess had brought his twenty-year-old daughter, Ashe, and his long time partner, Ray Veld. His daughter, Ashe was tall like her father, a little shorter and obviously resembled him in other ways. Her black hair curled in elaborate folds to the back of her head and her defined face had Peter’s intensity. She was slap-down to bed beautiful and I couldn’t keep my eyes off her until I noticed that she was armed.

  Ray, was shorter
than both of them, had a light complexion and graying hair. At thirty or so, he’d kept an excellent shape, stood solidly at five feet eight inches or so, and weighed, maybe one hundred and eighty pounds. Both he and Peter had served in the army in Vietnam together and I saw that they were both wearing a side holster as well.

  I whispered it to Una, but when she settled in, it was to Mulligan she turned, exaggerating her accent and almost singing.

  “A word to the wiser,

  My dear Miss Shirer,

  The Tappets are obliging folks,

  And you be keeping their names away from the press blokes,

  Or you be tramming back to New England awful sorry,

  without your camera or your story!”

  Everyone laughed and Mulligan turned red. “I’ve agreed to cover the story while keeping the Tappet’s name out of the paper,” she promised again.

  “The place where Sally is being kept,” Rick said, “is one of the most secure of any of the cults. It’s some twenty miles back on a dirt road off the highway. The colony itself is fenced in and consists of four buildings: The Elder’s house, which according to my spies, is currently in some state of reconstruction; this will be occupying the Elder’s attention, which is good. There are the recruitment barn, a large farm house and a long log cabin for bunk-sleeping for the recruits. The grounds are patrolled by armed guards with German Shepherds. One of the buildings has a watchtower so that no one can drive up the road to the house undetected.”

  “My goodness,” said Una, “it’s a concentration camp.”

  “In the beginning,” Rick said, “I could pop into one of these communes with a parent and easily scoop their kids out, no trouble, now, much because of my success, and notoriety, my work has become harder.”

  Una furrowed her eyebrows and I couldn’t help but admiring her more and more. “Do you mean that these protections have been made because of you? I’m starting to believe what they say about you.”