On the drive down to Texas, with most of my belongings jammed into my dad’s Lexus, my boyfriend and I trailed a caravan of polygamists who were also making the trip south. It was 2010 and I was 25, running from the destruction Lou Gehrig’s disease, or ALS, had levied on my dad.
For two days, we traded places on the road with the polygamists’ trucks and an accompanying big, white van. Though in many ways nondescript, designed not to attract attention, I knew—all were filled with children, all had up-to-date Arizona plates. I relayed stories to my boyfriend of growing up in Salt Lake City with a polygamist nanny, getting haircuts and massages from her sisters, and wandering the secret passageways of Warren Jeffs’ abandoned fundamentalist compound at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon.
A few times, we filled up at the same gas station as the caravan. I’d sit on the sizzling hood of Dad’s Lexus and take in the sister wives with their tight braids and wish I had a cigarette, wish I smoked, so I could blow mysteriously in their direction.
On the homestretch into Austin our final night on the road, we cruised through Round Rock and the blinking yellow lights of Pflugerville like we were making a getaway. We could have been hauling butt to Mexico even though we knew we’d only make it as far as a Motel 6 on the side of Interstate 35.
Bleary the next morning, I pulled the Lexus onto the frontage road too slowly. A car came up behind me and tapped my bumper, knocking me out of yesterday’s reverie and putting me squarely back in the driver’s of my dad’s car. The guy who rear-ended me was funny and sweet and flirted with me right in front of my boyfriend. We