Page 59 of Rescued By the Operative
Jake
The landscape looks different now.
It’s all gone. The buildings the elders built. The silos that stored supplies for the so-called end of days. The sister-wives and the hordes of children have spread out to neighboring towns, far-flung cities, or even out of the country for their own safety.
The family ranch is gone, too. The house, barns, cabins, and stables remain, but Wylie, Ennis, Curly, and I don’t live there anymore. They’ve been lovingly incorporated into a nature trail among tribal art studios, interactive historical museums, and a community and cultural center. Most of the fields have been returned to their natural state of prairie grass. It’s beautiful and thriving, and as it should be.
Ennis, Wylie, and I all agreed that after the Kinship church fell, we could not in good conscience work cattle again. Sometimes,when you tear out the bad plants, you have to start over with something new and better.
Or, in this case, something that was here before any of us ranchers.
With everything that’s happened, the fitting response was to hand everything over to the Crow tribe.
Today, the tribe has allowed us to come back for a special occasion. A photo shoot for a national magazine that’s doing a story about a new book titled Finding Kinship: From Sister-Wives to True Family.
The magazine’s photographer has the book’s authors all eerily dressed alike in white dresses, standing on a hill blanketed with pretty white flowers. Snow-on-the-mountain. Perfect choice.
As proud as I am of Olivia, Louisa, Goldie, Georgie, and Jasmyn, I think my wife should be writing her own book.
“What do you think?” I ask Nelly as we watch the photographer line up the former cult members.
It’s a beautiful summer day, and all our friends and family are here to celebrate the book that’s coming out in a few months.
Today is the first time we’ve all gathered since we gave the property over to the tribe.
Wylie has retired from ranching, and he and Olivia have relocated to Missoula. Ellis and Louisa stayed at the nearby farm and turned it into a sustainable eco-tourism business. Barrett and Goldie live up at the mountain cabin. Jefferson and Georgie have settled in a cute bungalow on the edge of Darling Creek. Joaquin and Jasmyn have been documenting their travels and have a substantial social media following.
As for Nelly and me, we live a quiet life down in Colorado, working with the Lost Boys—the nickname given to teen boys who were cast out of the church at a young age. The reason? For being young and good-looking and competition for the elders who hoarded wives in the name of eternal salvation. All of these Lost Boys are grown now, but still need help—and, in many cases, parenting. We keep the home in North Carolina for when we need to retreat from the world. It’s a serene life for us, for now.
Nelly circles her arm around my waist. “What do I think about what?”
“Your story. When are you going to write your book?”
She shrugs. “The people we work with deserve their privacy, and I don’t want to ruin that for them. And I don’t think anything I have to say is half as interesting as what those women went through.”
She casts her gaze at the five women, now the faces featured in all the news coverage of the dismantling of C.O.C.K.
Nelly’s right. But I’m still in awe of what she did.
“You’ll always be the most interesting story to me,” I say.
“You’re sweet. But I don’t care to share myself with the public. Definitely not on social media. Georgie naming their daughter after me is peak praise,” she says. “And I like being behind the scenes.”
That’s something she has in common with her former handler. Curly, as I know him, has been lying low. After everything that happened, he and Audrey, the former public defender, ran away together, got married in Vegas, and then decided to stay there.Audrey’s defense attorney career has been thriving, and Curly works as a casino security consultant.
We may not all live all together, but we all check on each other and keep tabs. The once-rescue group is now a family.
It took some time and a lot of work to dismantle everything that had poisoned our peaceful little town.
And I’m proud to have served a small part of it.
THE END