Read Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell for Free Online Page B

hysterically. "It was a warped childhood." She rolled her blue-green eyes at her own exaggeration.
    One day her Aunt Ramona had hurt her feelings by saying, "Minda doesn't take life seriously enough. Everything's a big joke to her."
    It was true that Minda never used one word when ten would suffice. To some she came across as a scatterbrain, but her friends and family knew better. She was nervous, bright and quick. Her popcorn-popper speech and loud spasms of laughter helped dissipate nervous energy. Sister Meg had a tendency to do the same, and so did her mother, though neither with the middle child's intensity. In between laughs, Minda berated herself about every little thing: "Well, gol, girl, you've got to do those dishes!" "Come on, you silly! Move it!" She would say, "Shame, shame, double shame! Minda, what is the matter with you?"
    In Lovell High School she'd been a tomboy who barely spoke-to girls, played football and "Army" with the boys, and starred as first trumpeter in the band. She loved to blow her horn; she bragged that she could play anything up to (but not including) "The Flight of the Bumble Bee." In church she usually got stuck with the third part harmony "because nobody else would play it." The Lovell church was the only known LDS congregation with a trumpeter playing third part. At informal church functions, her luminous sister Meg pounded the drums on uplifting songs like "Genealogy" or the rousing Mormon marches.
    Minda's childhood problem was low self-esteem. "Everybody thinks I'm the outspoken one. But gosh, I wasn't that way as a kid. I hated housework, so I'd go out and help my dad. I'd milk, feed the animals, grind the hay, run the tractor. I love my mother, but we weren't as close as me and my dad. I got along with the other kids, I guess. The household rule was, don't mess with Minda. My sister Michele and I used to wrestle, and I always won. My little brother Mike, I could just clean his plow. When it came to wrestling, I knew little tricks, like get 'em in a leg-lock and squish 'em hard."
    Her voice lowered. "I spoke my mind and didn't take anything off anybody." Her family advised her to soften, but she couldn't. Who would stand up for the middle child if she didn't stand up for herself? "I served my time in the principal's office. In those days, my best friend was my journal. Some subjects were just too personal. I filled notebook after notebook."
    She giggled as she pulled a yellowing Stenopad from a box crammed with papers. "I wrote this on my thirteenth birthday in 1971. 'Everybody forgets my birthday, even the kids at school.' Two days later, Michele and I were baby-sitting our baby brother Marc. We let him play on the lawn while we cleaned house, and our dog Champ chomped him on the face. Dr. Story wasn't around and another doctor had to take stitches. Michele and I were gonna run away. We knew that Dad was gonna kill us."
    For blood offenses, church doctrine called for blood atonement (one reason that the Mormon theocracy known as Utah permitted execution by firing squad). Minda and her sister feared that their father might follow the stricture, and they composed a plea called "Watch My Tiny Baby." It opened:
    We have run away cuz Champ bit Marc this very day.
    And ended:
    We hope you keep your cool, So we can go to school. So we
    Can go so nice and clear with out bruises on the rear.
    The two sisters were so frightened that night that they made their grandmother sit between them as their parents walked in the door. Dean McArthur ignored the girls and exacted his blood atonement on the dog.
    Minda thought she could put her finger on the exact moment when she began to think of herself as a lower form of life. "Uncle Bob began on me when I was seven," she said, and burst into tears. "Oh, gol," she wailed, "I'm so ashamed." She composed herself and told her story in fits and starts:
    "He did it to me dozens of times. I kept it to myself till I found out that he was bothering my sisters and