The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir

The following spring, Ruth turned 12, and life at home slowly deteriorated into even greater chaos. Driving with Lane one day, Ruth was dozing when he began molesting her. Rather than fending him off as usual, Ruth pretended to be asleep, forcing herself not to move so that she could finally have solid evidence that Lane was still abusing her. She didn’t need to tell Kathy anything because her mother seemed to sense it. Unfortunately, however, Kathy’s response was just a repeat of the other times: She downplayed it and made excuses for Lane. Lane was casual about it as well, saying, “All I did was touch you” (234), as though it was not a big deal. Ruth was screaming inside for her mother to defend her, but she never did.

Ruth spent much of her free time with her half-sisters over the next few months but felt so betrayed by her mother that she decided to run away. She only made it as far as her cousin’s house, and her angry mother drove her home the next morning. Ruth wished that Kathy had been that angry at Lane too. Kathy tried to tell Ruth that the abuse she experienced wasn’t serious and to get over it. Later, Ruth exploded at her mother, yelling at her and calling Lane an “asshole.” She questioned Kathy for continuing to stay with an abusive man who contributed little to the family. Kathy seemed shocked and hurt by the comments but only told Ruth to mind her own business. Several weeks later, word spread around the colony that Lane was abusing many different girls. The church held a trial that lasted weeks and eventually found Lane guilty and temporarily banished him. While Lane was gone, his wives each took turns visiting him, and before long, Kathy and one other sister wife were pregnant again. Ruth found that she could no longer be happy about this news, and wondered how her mother could possibly be attracted to a man who abused her child. Making everything worse, Kathy and the other sister wives convinced the council to let Lane return to the colony. Kathy promised Ruth that she would report Lane if he ever abused her again.

When Ruth was 13, Kathy gave birth to her next child, Leah, and the family moved back and forth between Mexico and the US often, following Lane for work. They eventually settled in LeBaron again, and as Ruth and her siblings grew up and more siblings arrived, Ruth increasingly became a mother figure in the family. Micah was shy and quiet, which made Ruth worry about his position in a colony of outspoken men, and Luke continued to wander off and get lost. Ruth often escaped by going out at night with her friends, and at 14 was already driving a truck (even while intoxicated) and going to various towns to dance and party. One night while she was alone with her siblings, a thunderstorm raged overhead, and Micah came to Ruth, scared. Remembering how their mother always rejected the children when they feared a storm or the dark, Ruth vowed in that moment to do the opposite. She held Micah close, and they helped keep one another calm.

When one of Lane’s wives left him, Ruth started to hope that her own mother would too, but Kathy was soon pregnant again and it was clear that she would never leave Lane. Matt came to visit, and Maria was with him, surprising both Ruth and Kathy. Ruth was shocked to see Matt with someone she considered a sister, but they were clearly happy together. Kathy commented that Maria would make a jealous sister wife, and Ruth considered her own future, knowing that she did not want a life in which she had to share a husband and raise children alone.

The following Christmas, snow fell on LeBaron for the first time in Ruth’s life. She watched happily as her siblings made snowmen. Ruth worried about her siblings often and left school at her mother’s request to take care of them. Matt came home to visit, and when Kathy mentioned her concerns about Maria to Matt, he admitted that he wasn’t considering plural marriage in his future, which shocked Kathy. Kathy assumed that Matt would follow the teachings he was brought up with, but Ruth was equally surprised to realize that her mother didn’t see herself as the terrible example of a polygamist life that she was. She began to pity her mother, knowing that Kathy was trapped in her beliefs and would never be happy. She worried about Kathy’s physical health too, given that she was bedridden throughout most of her 10th pregnancy.

In January 1987, Kathy gave birth to her 10th child, Holly. Soon after this, Ruth convinced her mother to let her visit Matt in California and work for a while, and there she learned that her grandpa had died two weeks earlier. No one had called to tell Kathy or the family about it, so Ruth had to call Kathy and tell her. Kathy was distraught to realize that no one told her or invited her to the funeral, and she asked Ruth to come home. The night Ruth returned, she was startled by her mother in the middle of the night, who appeared before her, crying. Kathy told Ruth she was sorry for never showing appreciation for everything Ruth did for the family and for what Lane had done to her (though she still tried to excuse it again). Kathy told Ruth she loved her, which Ruth rarely heard, and they hugged.

When Kathy announced that she might be pregnant again, Ruth couldn’t help but question her, wondering why she couldn’t at least wait a while. Kathy was certain that God would ensure the family was taken care of and that faith was all that was necessary, but Ruth knew that practicality mattered too. Lane’s first wife, Alejandra, hosted a birthday party and invited Kathy’s whole family. During the piñata breaking, Micah’s reserved nature prevented him from getting any candy, and one boy accidentally pushed him over. When Micah cried, Ruth comforted him but felt irritated by his dramatic reaction.

The next morning, Micah went swimming in the nearby ditch with Alejandra’s sons, Alex and Junior. Minutes later, Alex came running back to the house in a panic, saying that Micah and Junior had been shocked. Hearing this, Ruth tore out of the house and found both boys behind a tumbleweed patch, lodged against a barbed-wire fence. Both boys were electrocuted, pinned to the fence by the current, and were dead when Ruth found them. She screamed in horror and ran for her mother, who came in a panic to try to save her son (although he was already gone). Ruth warned her multiple times not to touch the fence, which should not have been electrified but was due to faulty wiring. Kathy slipped and grabbed the fence by instinct for balance. Ruth managed to pull her off the fence by grabbing her mother’s shirt and heaving her away from the wire. Kathy was unresponsive but breathing, and Ruth ran to the highway to flag down someone to help. Realizing that there was no hospital nearby, she had to rely on two Mexican men who passed by in a truck. One stayed behind to watch the rest of the children after helping Ruth get her mother in the truck. They drove past Lane’s third wife’s house, and Lane took over for Ruth upon hearing what happened.

Ruth tried to tell Lane’s wife about the incident, but she apparently assumed that Ruth had a delusion and did not believe it until she saw it with her own eyes. A few hours later, Lane returned from the clinic in town and announced that Kathy had died upon arrival. Ruth could not believe what she was hearing; it felt like she should be able to rewind and start again. At the end of the chapter is a photograph of Micah, Alex, and Junior together.

The night between the deaths and the funeral, Ruth took charge of the home and did her best to keep everyone calm. A state of numbness overtook the siblings, and Ruth courageously approached the dead bodies of her mother, Micah, and Junior, looking at each one closely and noticing that even in death, her mother and she looked alike. Ruth’s grandma and Matt arrived for the funeral, but Ruth’s grandma said little, distraught that her worst fears had come true. At the funeral, the bodies were decomposing rapidly, and the smell was unbearable. Ruth’s grandmother was the first to point out that it was an unfit experience for young children, and Ruth followed her out. She was glad to be away from Lane, who didn’t appear to feel guilty at all despite being the one who installed the wiring. During the eulogy, Joel’s brother spoke for almost an hour about the teachings of polygamy, never once mentioning Kathy or the boys. Ruth and her grandma saw it as an insult. At the burial, Ruth had a turn to throw dirt on her mother’s coffin and listened as “the sound of gravel” (303) echoed off it.

The next day, the family sat around wondering how to proceed with their lives without Kathy. Lane made a long speech about how none of it was his fault and the wires were there for a reason. Matt criticized Lane’s dismissal of responsibility, but Lane stuck to his position. At one point, Lane even placed the blame on God, saying it was part of his plan. Ruth’s grandmother couldn’t bear to hear it, and neither could Matt. The children wanted to go live with their grandma, but Lane did not permit it, instead only allowing them to visit one by one. Aaron was the first to go, and Lane went off to work in the mountains with Luke.

Two months later, the children were living with Lane’s fourth wife, Marjory. Holly was getting thinner and refusing to eat, which led Lane to purchase a goat to provide milk. Luke was especially excited about the new family member. When Lane suggested taking Elena to the mountains with him, Ruth immediately grew suspicious and denied him, saying he would have to take all of them if he took her. Later, Luke told Ruth that Lane was abusing him on work trips the same way he had done to her. Hearing this, Ruth felt as though she were suffocating, and something snapped inside her. She could not bear the thought of her brother, who had a developmental disability and was thus particularly vulnerable, experiencing the same abuse she had. She told Luke to keep it a secret for now and immediately went to call Matt.

Ruth ran to the convenience store, thinking about how the community’s preaching meant nothing if it did nothing for the well-being of children. She called Matt with gravity in her voice, saying that he had to get them out of LeBaron immediately. When she explained what happened to Luke, Matt became enraged and began planning to get his siblings out safely. Matt told Ruth to go back to their old house and find their siblings’ birth certificates, which Ruth was reluctant to do, but she knew she had no choice. Back at their house, she entered her mother’s room and found it just as Kathy had left it. Grabbing what she needed, she returned to Marjory’s house. There, she told Marjory what Lane did to Luke, finally convincing Marjory to leave the colony. Marjory became the adult who acted as the children’s mother so that they could cross the border safely. Matt drove into LeBaron the next night to pick up Ruth and the others. As they drove away, anxious about being spotted, Ruth thought about everything she would miss about LeBaron, like the hills and her sisters. The family made it through the border safely and realized they had made it out.

Twenty years later, Ruth stands in her wedding gown, surrounded by all her sisters, who grew up healthy after facing years of adversity and painful healing. Seeing them all reminds Ruth of their childhood and their mother, who is in each of them. She thinks of Kathy and hopes she would be proud of Ruth for helping raise her siblings and keeping them safe. She wishes her mother were there but nonetheless is surrounded by family. Ruth also thinks of Audrey, who lives in a group home, and her grandparents, who are now both gone. She thinks of Micah, who was so young when he died, and of Alan, the man she is about to marry. Alan carries all the values that Ruth always wanted in a husband but was never sure she deserved. Now she can look ahead to the future with optimism.