THE LAWN WOULD BE SHAGGY, the curtains pulled, and the clothes falling off the line when the neighbors would start to joke that maybe the Weavers had died in that house. Finally, someone would sneak over and find the television on, tuned to Jerry Falwell or The PTL Club, and the family in the living room, curled up on that beige and orange shag, poring over a bunch of mail-order books and an open Bible. The Weavers would finish the Bible lesson and burst outside, doing the lawn and laundry in a rush of Iowan good will and Christian warmth: “God bless you” to everyone who passed.
Fourth in a row of five tidy houses, Randy and Vicki Weaver’s white and brick rancher was set back from a tree-lined avenue in Cedar Falls, Iowa. University Avenue was a busy strip of tire stores and pizza parlors that drifted in and out of residential neighborhoods and edged neat lawns. In 1973, the Weavers paid $26,000 for the best home on the block, impressive for a couple still sneaking up on thirty. Like an old-fashioned family, they “came-a-calling” on their new neighbors—Randy with his bushy brown hair and mustache, Vicki with her raven hair, parted in the middle and falling straight down to the middle of her back—both of them impressing everyone with their friendliness and manners. They drove the elderly people in the neighborhood to the store and back and helped them buy groceries. When little Sara was born in March of 1976, most everyone in the neighborhood agreed, she was the cutest and smartest baby, with her mama’s seriousness, her narrow, dark eyes, and jet-black hair.
But for Randy and Vicki, something was missing. Sports cars, toys, and Amway didn’t give purpose to their lives. Society didn’t offer anything better. The antiwar movement had been idiotic and all the hippies and Yippies made a mockery of Randy and Vicki’s generation. And now the seventies? Neither Randy nor Vicki could condone such shallow, hedonistic lifestyles. Unhappy with what they saw around them, Randy and Vicki returned to their religious upbringing. Every Sunday, the Weavers drove their Oldsmobile east toward Waterloo and pulled into the gravel parking lot of the Cedarloo Baptist Church, on a hill between Waterloo and Cedar Falls, took their place in the pews, and listened to the minister. But there seemed to be no fire or passion, no sense of what was really happening in the world. They’d tried other churches and found congregations interested in what God had done 2,000 years ago, but no one paying attention to what God was doing right then.
Certainly, churches weren’t addressing the crime in Cedar Falls, the drugs, or the sorry state of schools and government, not to mention the kind of danger that Hal Lindsey described. They would have to find the truth themselves. They began doing their own research, especially Vicki. She had quit work to raise Sara, and later Samuel, who was born in April 1978. When Sara started school, Randy and Vicki couldn’t believe the pagan things she was being taught. They refused to allow her to dress up for Halloween—Satan’s holiday—and decided they had to teach Sara at home. But that was illegal in Iowa.
A booster shot of religion came with cable television and The PTL Club, the 700 Club, and Jerry Falwell. The small television in the kitchen was on all the time for a while, but most of Vicki’s free time was spent reading. She’s lose herself in the Cedar Falls public library, reading the science fiction her dad had introduced her to as a kid, the novels and self-help books friends recommended, biblical histories, political tracts, and obscure books that she discovered on her own. Like a painter, she pulled out colors and hues that fit with the philosophy she and Randy were discovering, and everywhere she looked there seemed to be something guiding them toward “the truth,” and, at the same time, pulling them closer together.
She spent hours in the library, and when she found something that fit, she passed it along first to Randy, who might read the book himself and then spread it to everyone—the people at work, in the neighborhood, at the coffee shop where he hung out. They read books from fringe organizations and groups, picking through the philosophies, taking what they agreed with and discarding the rest. Yet some of the books that influenced them came from the mainstream, such as Ayn Rand’s classic libertarian novel Atlas Shrugged. Vicki found its struggle between the individual and the state prophetic and its action inspiring. The book shows a government so overbearing and immoral that creative people, led by a self-reliant protagonist, go on strike and move to the mountains.
“‘You will win,’” the book’s protagonist cries from his mountain hideout, “‘when you are ready to pronounce the oath I have taken at the start of my battle—and for those who wish to know the day of my return, I shall now repeat it to the hearing of the world:
“‘I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live my life for the sake of another man, nor ask another to live for mine.’”
Another time, she told friends to read some short stories by H. G. Wells. Most of Wells’s popular stories were about time travel, space, and hidden civilizations, the kinds of science fiction that had been passed on by her dad when she was young.
But Wells was the author of some lesser known tales, too, several religious and prophetic short stories, such as “A Vision of Judgment,” in which a man is pulled from his grave and taken before God; “The Story of the Last Trump,” in which a handful of characters fails to see Judgment Day approaching; and the bizarre story, “A Dream of Armageddon.” In it, two men meet on a train and one begins to tell the other about his vivid dreams of the future. “‘Your dreams don’t mix with your memories?’ he asked abruptly. ‘You don’t find yourself in doubt; did this happen or did it not?’”
In Wells’s story, the man dreams he is a great leader living with a woman in the future on a 1,000-foot cliff with a view in several directions. On his cliff, men come to him and tell him they are at war with him. “‘Why cannot you leave me alone,’” the dreamer asks. “‘I have done with these things. I have ceased to be anything but a private man.’”
“‘Yes,’” the other man answers. “‘But have you thought?—this talk of war, these reckless challenges, these wild aggressions—’”
Later in the story, the man and woman flee, but they are followed—”‘There is no refuge for us,’” he says in his dream. They escape down their hill into Naples, Italy, and are followed by airplanes. In the end the couple stays together in the face of horrible danger—”‘Even now I do not repent. I will not repent; I made my choice, and I will hold on to the end.’” Finally, the man and woman are killed and the dream, like the short story, ends.
Vicki told friends that H. G. Wells’s fifty-year-old stories had a lot of relevance in modern America, especially for someone like herself, someone who had begun getting messages from God while she took baths and who was having dreams of great violence and a cabin on a mountaintop.
CAROLEE FLYNN WAS THIRTEEN YEARS OLDER than Vicki but nowhere near as learned about Scripture and the Lord’s plan and all that business. When she and her husband, Dewey, moved in next door to the Weavers in 1979, Carolee—a short, Pall Mall-voiced bank clerk and pizza waitress—took them for just a couple of nice kids going about the business of raising a family. Randy and Dewey went fishing a few times, but Carolee and Vicki became the real friends, leaning across their driveways for “How you beens” that turned into forty-minute soul-searching conversations and explorations of faith.
It was Vicki who taught her to coupon, clipping and saving and challenging herself to find the best deal. And garage saleing, too—that was Vicki. But mostly Vicki was her teacher, trying to bring her to the Lord and make her understand how Christianity fit in with everything happening in the world. Carolee was glad to be there for Vicki when she needed a friend, like the time—after Sam was born, right around the time the visions became stronger—when Vicki miscarried. She was so brave and strong and smart, she hardly talked about losing the baby, except at first. And then she just said it was God’s will. They became best friends over gallons of iced tea, sitting in the backyard, watching Sammy and Sara play.
Randy was always talking about money, how it was going to be devalued, how the banks were going to collapse. If you had to let someone keep your money for you, Randy said, the credit union might be the best bet. Randy loved to talk. He could charm any room, and he had a new best friend every week—factory workers, cops, professionals, even a black guy he worked with at John Deere who came by the house sometimes. If Randy knew something, he found it impossible not to tell people about it. Everything with him was right or it was wrong, and he tossed off authoritative opinions like so much small talk.
At night, he’d sneak off when the kids were getting ready for bed, when Vicki was in the tub, and walk down University, a Bible in his hands, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, until he got to Sambo’s, an all-hours restaurant and coffee shop that filled every evening with the guys from the Deere plant, grumpy retirees, off-duty cops, and neighborhood Christians. Randy was known well enough there that he could pour himself a cup of coffee and cruise along the booths, talking to the people eating a late dinner and to the other restless Christians who came down to witness. He’d warn anyone who listened about current politics, tell them to repent, and launch into biblical prophecy and the coming end time. It wasn’t long before he found a group of about ten people who felt the way he did, born-again coffee-swilling Christians who met at the restaurant at night, debating and sharing Scripture. Sambo’s became the center of the radical born-again movement in Cedar Falls, and Randy became a spirited recruiter.
For instance, it was Randy who brought Vaughn Trueman to Sambo’s. Vaughn owned a gun store—The Bullet Hole—at the other end of University, and in 1980, Randy started coming in, shopping for guns to protect himself during the end time. The first time Randy introduced Vaughn to Vicki, she looked him in the eyes and said she’d seen him already—in a vision—coming to the Lord. They talked more and more about the Bible until something sparked inside Vaughn, and in 1981, he found himself holding hands with one of Randy’s friends, accepting the Lord as his personal savior. Such miracles were happening up and down University, and for some people the Lord’s work seemed to be centered around that little white and brick rancher.
Another member of the Sambo’s Bible study was Mike Roethler, a tall, gentle Cedar Falls police officer who was undergoing his own religious transformation. Roethler didn’t know Weaver very well until one day when he brought a homeless man into Sambo’s and asked some of the regulars to help the man out. While the others just sat there, staring at their coffee, this short, quick guy, Randy Weaver, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. Randy was that way with strangers, always bringing home some lost soul to save. He brought them into his house, gave them clothes and food, even a place to stay. Even after one of them stole from the family, Weaver brought other strays home.
That’s how Shannon Brasher started coming around. Shannon was a former Marine who’d been in Vietnam and was a security specialist at the Deere factory. Shannon was in the middle of his third divorce and hanging out in Sambo’s when Randy struck up a conversation with him. He recognized Randy from the plant, and the two became friends. Later, Randy even helped him root out some thieves at the plant. Randy said it didn’t matter that Shannon had been married and divorced three times.
God loved him anyway. Soon, Shannon accepted Jesus and became a regular at the Sambo’s late-night Bible studies, which quickly became too animated—with healings and people speaking in tongues—to hold in the middle of a family restaurant.
THEY CALLED THEMSELVES LEGALISTS, because they believed that the Bible was the literal word of God and that it all must be taken as the truth, even the laws of the Old Testament, which many churches treated as arcane and pointless dogma. One of the beautiful mysteries of the Old Testament was how often God just up and spoke to people, told them what to do, when to do it, and—most fulfilling and frightening of all—what was going to happen in the future. It made the religion far more dynamic when God was telling people directly what to do. To the Cedar Falls legalists, if God’s word could come that way 10,000 years ago, there was no reason to believe it couldn’t come that way now. So when Vicki decided her family would follow Old Testament law and stop eating unclean meat like pork and oysters (“The Lord says, ‘Don’t eat it’—He knows it’s got trichonomas and isn’t good for your body,” Vicki wrote to a friend), no one in the group thought she’d come about the decision from anywhere but Scripture and His divine will.
There would be anywhere from four to ten people at the Weavers’ house, sometimes as often as four nights a week. Randy led the Bible study most of the time, but everyone read chapters and commented on what they might mean. Vicki was clearly the scripturalist and scholar of the group. It was as if she had memorized the whole thing, from Genesis to Revelation, Acts to Zechariah.
They read only the King James Version of the Bible, because Vicki said other translations weren’t divinely inspired and were pagan-influenced. By 1981, the Old Testament books were opening up for Randy and Vicki, not as outdated stories, but as the never-ending law of the Maker. He was opening their eyes to what was happening now, in the United States, just as Hal Lindsey had foretold. The forces of evil (the Soviet Union, the U.S. government, Jewish bankers) were ready to strike at any time against American people. From Ezekiel, they read: “Son of man [Christian Americans], set thy face against Gog [the grand conspiracy] …
“Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company [their Bible study group] that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them. After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword [somewhere in the American West], and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains [the Rockies] of Israel [the United States], which have been always waste [the desolate mountains of Montana? Colorado? Idaho?]: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them.”
In that way, the Scriptures spoke to the Bible group in the early 1980s, through Randy and especially Vicki. There were tears and laughter and languages no one understood. Sore backs were healed, and the Weaver house filled with a spirit they’d never felt before. But God was trying to warn them of something darker, too. The couple agreed that all the signs that Hal Lindsey warned of were there: Some force was moving them to action, trying to gather the believers for the coming end time! From Ezekiel:
Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land, thou and all thy bands, and many people with thee.
And I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith the Lord God; every man’s sword shall be against his brother’s.
Clearly, they would need weapons. First, to fight the Communists, who would likely come through Canada, and then, once the Tribulation started, government agents and nonbelievers who would come for them, and scavengers with guns who would be roaming the countryside. Randy began sleeping with a loaded pistol under his pillow.
The book of Daniel, the Old Testament prophet, sounded an alarm even more shrill:
… and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time …
And Matthew!
… and then shall the end come … And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye not be troubled: for all these things must come to pass … For nation, shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines and pestilences, and earthquakes in diverse places.
Yes! All those things were happening. Randy and Vicki shook news clippings and applied news events to the war, famine, and pestilence litmus test. It all fit! Praise be His glorious name!
All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.
Yes! Already, they had been mistreated at church and Randy had gotten in trouble for preaching at work. The persecution was beginning.
When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)
Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains.
Matthew 24 stopped them cold. Dear God! There it was, right in front of them. Vicki shook with the message. It was so clear! And it wasn’t just in their readings.
“We have dreams,” Vicki confided in Carolee Flynn. Randy’s visions, especially, were vivid and profound. He dreamed of a configuration of buildings on a hillside, a cabin and outbuildings. For her part, Vicki took baths and the spirit showed her an empty cabin that would need to be fully supplied for the coming tribulation. There were cynics in her family and in the neighborhood who imagined what might happen to a couple who believed that every loose thought, every inexplicable picture that popped into the subconscious was a message from the Creator.
But to Randy and Vicki, the inspiration came only in close association with the Scriptures. There were dozens of biblical chapters warning of the evils of images and so, when He showed Vicki that she should purge herself and her house of all images, they knew it was true. And so, the TV—that most devilish purveyor of images—was sold. Many of the children’s toys were simply images, too. It wasn’t that Vicki wanted the children to give up their teddy bears, but God had spoken and such bears were images of real bears and therefore a disrespect unto Him. Vicki and Randy went through the house that way, getting rid of photographs and coffee tables with images of leaves on them. One day, Vicki gathered up her Bird of Paradise dishes—with tiny, beautiful bluebirds painted on each one, including the gravy boat and the decorative wall dishes she’d scoured garage sales for—and she knocked on Carolee’s door. Carolee felt awful, but in the end Vicki pleaded, and so Carolee traded her plain, ugly plates for Vicki’s beautiful set. Carolee got end tables and a glass lamp because of God’s message.
But the most important message was about the time. Of course, the time! Vicki pored over the Bible and prayed endlessly, begging to know exactly how much time they had before the end of the world, how much time she had to get ready. From Daniel—”Blessed is he that waiteth and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days.”
And, of course, Revelation.
And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings … and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.
Forty-two months! Thirteen hundred days! Three and a half years! Dear Heavenly King!
They had to leave as soon as possible.
CAROLEE FLYNN WAS AMAZED by the energy and commitment at Vicki and Randy’s Bible studies the few times she attended, but she never quite felt like she fit in. It all flew over her head. Still, she and Vicki talked all the time about spiritual matters, and Carolee believed she was learning a lot from her neighbor and best friend.
One Christmas, Carolee watched the Weavers go about their lives without decorations or presents or anything.
“Why don’t you have a tree?” she finally asked. “It’s Christmas. Aren’t you supposed to be celebrating the birth of the Lord?”
Vicki told her that Jesus was probably born in September, certainly not December. “It’s considered a pagan holiday to put shimmery things on a tree,” she said.
Even if she didn’t quite agree with everything, Carolee learned a lot from the Weavers. At one Bible study, Randy interpreted a verse of Revelation for the group.
The beast “causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand or on their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name … and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” Six-six-six.
The beast, Randy said, was a metaphor for computers. Soon, everything would be catalogued on computer: births, schooling, purchases, homes. And every credit card, connected as they are by computers, would mark people with the number of the beast, Vicki said. Of course, once the currency was devalued and finally changed, no man could buy or sell without a credit card, without 666.
Later, Carolee admitted she was confused. “My credit card doesn’t have six-six-six on it.” Vicki, patient as always, explained that every card would have numbers that were derivatives of 666.
Randy and Vicki were trying to reach others as well, especially their families. Sunday dinners at the Jordisons had become theological debates over the form of the coming Tribulation—David’s moderate RLDS version versus Randy and Vicki’s survivalist Christian beliefs. The whole family would eat dinner first, David, Jeane, their kids, and a blossoming flock of grandchildren. Then the women would go shopping or form a circle in the kitchen and drink coffee, leaving the men alone to do what they did best together—argue and debate.
There was soon going to be a social breakdown, Randy would say. The government would use the opportunity to declare martial law, crushing democracy and killing the good Christian Americans. People will be rioting in the streets and the traitorous government would turn against its own people. The only protection would be clusters of good Christians with guns—
And that’s where Julie’s husband, Keith, wouldn’t be able to hold his tongue any longer. Reeling over the death of John Lennon, he’d say all guns ought to be illegal, tossing out statistics that showed how many people were wounded by their own guns—
And, on that point, Lanny would have to agree with his brother-in-law Randy about the gun thing, although his beliefs—
His beliefs are all wrong, David would point out. You can’t prepare physically for the return of Jesus, only spiritually—
And somehow, farm subsidies would come up, and everyone would switch sides—
And then Randy would throw out something that ended the argument because it was so ridiculous. “Someone ought to kill the Supreme Court justices.” Or: “The Holocaust never happened.”
That was too much for Vicki’s dad, who had been a young man during World War II and who knew real evil when he saw it. “Are you crazy? I was alive then, and I will tell you, it happened.” And that subject was closed.
But mostly they argued with Randy about his plan to leave Iowa and move up into the mountains of Oregon, Montana, or Idaho. David had seen that Randy wasn’t the most mechanical guy in the world, and he figured the family would starve to death as soon as they got five miles out of Iowa. “You’ve got a family to think about, you bonehead,” David said. But Randy wouldn’t budge. And if his in-laws wanted to survive the Great Tribulation, if they didn’t want their children turned into slaves of the New World Order, the Jordison family would be wise to follow them.
In the kitchen, the women rarely talked about such stuff. Julie knew when they stopped celebrating Christmas that her sister was becoming more radical, but she also knew there was no way to talk her out of something once she was so deeply into it. And in every theological breakthrough, Julie saw her sister’s personality. So while everyone else in the family argued with Randy about the Great Tribulation and moving to Idaho, Julie could tell Randy’s bluster was coming from Vicki’s ideas. They’d make eye contact and she’d give him a small nod or correct some point, and off he’d go again on a wild tangent about holidays being the work of Satan. Once, when Randy was losing an argument, Vicki stormed into the living room and told her dad and brother to leave him alone.
Julie knew her sister, and she guessed there was another side to this transformation. She wondered if Vicki liked the way she and Randy revolved around each other while they were becoming the instruments of the Lord. It had seemed to her that in the mid-seventies, Randy had all these other things going on in his life—his job, his toys, his friends—and she knew Vicki was threatened by all of that. While she didn’t doubt their sincerity, Julie thought she saw the psychological tracks that led to where the Weavers were going: Vicki with her tight family—alone in the woods—and Randy with his toys—every kind of gun he could afford—and his macho lifestyle, the survivalism.
In 1982, Julie had begun dabbling in astrology, and Keith was still playing in a rock-and-roll band when, one afternoon, Randy knocked on the door. He made some small talk and then got to the point. “You’re letting the devil into your lives,” he told Julie. He pointed upstairs to where Julie’s baby, Emily, was sleeping. “The devil might be up there right now, possessing Emily.”
Julie stopped him right there.
“Get out and don’t come back, Randy.” She was furious.
“It was your sister that sent me down,” Randy admitted on the way out. Vicki never said a word to Julie about it.
Julie, like everyone else, realized that the less they said the better. Vicki gave birth to Rachel in 1982, and once again babies were a safer subject of conversation. Despite their growing paranoia, Randy and Vicki were still great parents. And anyway, Julie rationalized, she wasn’t going to persuade people who believed God was talking to them. If they just let the arguments wind down, they’d last only as long as the red faces, and then they could move on to less flammable subjects.
By the early 1980s, Julie began a debate with herself that would last for years. She never once sat down with her sister and said, “What are you doing with your life?” She didn’t think Vicki wanted that conversation. And so she just let it pass, asking polite questions as the Weavers became more and more excited about heading for the mountains.
Forever, Julie and Keith would talk about whether anything could have been done or said. But at the time, even they weren’t sure how far out there Randy and Vicki Weaver were swinging.
THE BELIEFS REVEALED THEMSELVES SLYLY, one book, one tape, one conspiracy at a time. The Weavers came across the staples of radical right-wing thought, ideas that have been around for decades, in some cases longer, lurking just off the edge of the mainstream, a pattern of marginalization that in itself made the material more powerful because people value what they have to work to find. Like thousands of others, Randy and Vicki Weaver were not stumbling into rehashed ideas and hoaxes, but discovering great truths hidden away from the mainstream, ideas that did a much better job crafting a cohesive and universal explanation of the world than the media’s mainstream message. They slipped imperceptibly from Christians to conspiracists.
Few people who don’t follow conspiracy theories comprehend their attraction: they create a framework for understanding everything by tying coincidence and accident together. If every event is part of the fabric of the conspiracy, then everything must have a reason, a meaning. And so, when the same unlikely details from one mimeographed pamphlet show up on a tape or in a mail-order book, it comes not only as confirmation but as revelation: “Here it is again! The Illuminati!” For true believers, the conspiracies seem no more unlikely or illogical than other things that are considered truth.
The Weavers uncovered a conspiracy that began in America with the Masons, the kind of secret society the prophets warn about in the Bible, that buried its tentacles in the farthest reaches of government. (Nearly every president had been a Mason.) The tool for this conspiracy, they read, was the Illuminati, founded May 1, 1776, a secret society of socialists that led to the Council on Foreign Relations, and later, the Trilateral Commission—shadowy supergovernments that pulled the strings of every level of government and law enforcement. All of these groups, in turn, were controlled by evil, money-grubbing Jews. The Weavers bent biblical prophecy to fit their new beliefs, until Vicki and Randy and a few others in the Bible study could imagine the Beast, the many-tentacled, Satanic government spoken of in Revelation. Who wanted to pay taxes to the Beast?
Mail often brought a book, pamphlet, or tape from some obscure mail-order house. One day it was “Satan’s Angels Exposed,” a sort of clearinghouse for radical right-wing conspiracies connecting everyone from George Washington to Gandhi, with crude illustrations of white Christians being strung up during the great tribulation. Another day, it was comic books for the kids to read on the carpeted floor: Betrayed and Doublecross, comics about how the Jews had killed Jesus. In the back of one book would be an address for another small publishing house, and that day Vicki would walk across the front yard and drop a letter in the mailbox, requesting more. They listened to a half dozen tapes made by a conspiracist named John Todd, and Randy even arranged for Todd to visit Cedar Falls and speak in a half-empty banquet room at the Holiday Inn. They worked so hard to get Todd into town that Carolee felt bad for Vicki and baked a batch of rolls. But when she brought them over, she saw John Todd pacing in the Weavers’ living room, packing a gun, of all things. She told Vicki she didn’t like him or the people he attracted, and Vicki agreed, pointing at one person and saying, “Watch out for him. He’s a neo-Nazi.”
Christianity could be so passive. It was always about someone else, about the disciples, the community, loving thy neighbor. The Weavers saw a vibrant, dangerous world, a judgmental, vengeful God, and churches that lay down in front of evil and refused to do battle. For the Weavers and the Bible study group they had formed, religious experience was active, a trip of self-discovery and a heightened sense of their own place.
Of course, it came to them as a revelation, the place where all this had been leading. Combined with their new sense of self and of divine prophecy, combined with the visions, combined with the inescapable pattern of conspiracy and coincidence in their own lives, Randy and Vicki Weaver began to find it difficult to believe there could be any other chosen people but themselves.
RANDY SLEPT PEACEFULLY, a flak jacket and helmet beside his bed, the loaded gun still under his pillow. But during the day, there was much less peace. Work was becoming intolerable. The guys he supervised were slovenly and immoral, sneaking off to read dirty magazines when they should have been working. His bosses told him to quit preaching and passing out literature to the other factory workers, a few of whom turned and ran when they saw Randy coming. It was no secret that some people wanted him fired. Just as God had shown them, the pressure and suspicions of the world were coming to bear on them because they chose to follow the truth.
For instance, there was Shannon’s girlfriend, whose parents didn’t like the talk they were hearing. They called the Cedar Falls police department, whose detectives had already heard of “The Group,” as some locals called it, and police were quietly looking into whether the Weavers and their friends had formed a cult.
Randy knew someone was watching him, and he became convinced his telephone was tapped. The forces of evil were gathering. They had to hurry. One weekend, the Weavers visited an Amish community to learn how to live without modern conveniences and how to store food for long periods of time. Vicki began dehydrating fruits and vegetables and stacking them against the basement wall. They planned to have a root cellar in the mountains and to hunt wild game, because they knew that in three and a half years, there would be no grocery on the corner. In fact, there might not even be any corner left. Randy and Shannon had been collecting the weapons they would need to hunt and to defend themselves: 30.06 rifles, pump shotguns, and Mini-14 semiautomatic assault rifles. Randy bought about ten guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition. At any given time, a half-dozen other people were preparing to go with the Weavers, including Vaughn and Shannon. And Randy seemed bent on warning everyone else in Iowa.
Pretty soon, the local newspaper heard about The Group. Dan Dundon, a reporter for the Waterloo Courier, sat down with Shannon Brasher and the Weavers in their living room in December 1982, turned on his tape recorder and, for the next hour or two, listened to stories of the Great Tribulation.
“The Bible teaches us,” Randy said, “that somewhere near, during the reign of the One World Leader, God will free the hands of Satan to wreak havoc with the peoples of the Earth.”
Dundon asked about the rumors that they were forming a cult, and the Weavers strongly denied it. There may be others going to the mountains, they said, but they weren’t trying to form any sort of group. “The ones who seek the truth will accept us, the ones who do not want the truth will call us crazy,” he said. They called themselves Christian survivalists, and Randy and Shannon talked about the strategic home they would need and a plan for defending it. They talked about a “kill zone,” a 300-yard defensible space around the home.
When the story came out, the Weavers were upset. It didn’t calm the rumors floating around but ignited them. Vicki told friends that the reporter quoted every wild thing they said and ignored the fact that, at heart, they were still a quiet, wholesome family, good Christians just trying to find their way in the world. They denied saying anything about a “kill zone.” Since the Weavers wouldn’t allow themselves to be photographed, next to the story was a drawing of a Bible and two bullets.
“We’re servants,” Vicki said in the story. “And what the Lord tells us to do, we will do. He has told us we have to pull up our roots and leave. I don’t want to leave my home, but if we are obedient, then He will protect our children.”
THEIR FRIENDS WERE SLOWLY falling away. Shannon, who had moved in with the family, had gotten into a disagreement because Vicki and Randy made his girlfriend stay in a different room. It became clear Shannon wasn’t going with them. Another family that had considered going decided against it, too.
And Vaughn was starting to have doubts. His wife didn’t like the idea, and besides, he didn’t have the money to stockpile food and guns. Then, in February 1983, driving past a church he’d never seen before, the gunshop owner stopped his car, walked inside, sat down in a pew, and asked for God’s guidance. Seated next to him, his wife started crying. He talked to the pastor of the church and realized God was telling him not to go.
The Weavers didn’t push him. Randy said he would honor Vaughn’s own vision and that it wasn’t for him to judge. Vicki admitted that in her visions of the mountain, she didn’t see Vaughn anyway. The gunshop owner began going to the new church and accepted that the birth of Jesus meant people didn’t have to live the Old Testament law anymore. Like everyone else in the congregation, Vaughn came to believe that he was saved by grace, not by following the impossible law of the Old Testament.
Cedar Falls police officer Mike Roethler had come to the same conclusion. He still liked Randy, and they got together to talk, but Roethler could feel his friend moving in a different direction. Once, Randy leaned forward and told Roethler that Jews were the product of Satan. “What? Jesus was a Jew,” Roethler said. “How can you believe that?” Roethler kept witnessing at the old Sambo’s, but his message had changed. More and more, it seemed as if Randy and Vicki were alone.
In March of 1983, Carolee watched Randy and Vicki pound the “For Sale” sign into their front yard. Oh my, she thought, they’re really doing this. They held garage sales every weekend, Randy standing in the front yard with a Bible, selling everything that wasn’t coming to the mountains with them. A few weeks later, Carolee and Vicki sat out on the back swingset, motionless in the still summer air.
“You’re really going?” Carolee asked. Vicki was exhausted. She had lost fifteen pounds getting everything ready for the trip, taking care of the children, finding exactly enough clothes to last the three years before Jesus came back.
“How am I going to learn any more about God without you?” Carolee wondered.
Vicki told her to relax. Everything she needed to know was in the Bible. “The King James Version, not the standard version,” Vicki said. “God’s word doesn’t change.”
But the King James Bible, with all its “thees” and “foresakens,” was so hard for Carolee to understand. “It’s easier the other way,” she said.
“Not if you’re a true believer,” Vicki said. Before she left, she gave Carolee a King James Bible, with especially large type.
Carolee said she’d never pick it all up. Inside, she knew she just didn’t believe the same way the Weavers did, and to be truthful, she didn’t understand all this Illuminati and Freemason stuff.
Vicki swung slowly and looked over at her friend. “Write down every question you’ve got and I’ll try to answer them.”
They talked about the things the Weavers would need to survive, and Carolee admitted she was worried about them. How would they eat? Where would they work?
“I’ll see you again.” Carolee tried to sound hopeful, for herself as much as anything, but, as she often did these days, Vicki seemed distant.
“You know Carolee, for our beliefs we could be killed. For our beliefs.”
THEY TRADED THEIR CAR for an old moving truck, a long, blue grain truck with a tarp thrown over the top that they backed up against the front porch. Sammy—who was a sickly kid—fell off the truck as soon as they got it and broke his leg. So the children stayed with Carolee while Vicki and Randy loaded the truck. “We goin’ to da mou’tains,” little Sammy said, and it was all Carolee could do to keep from crying. Meanwhile, Randy and Vicki worked themselves ragged packing food, clothes, and a little bit of furniture. Mike Roethler came over and helped Randy push an old woodstove to the back of the truck. They loaded guns and ammunition, kerosene lamps, everything that a family heading west might have taken eighty years earlier.
They got $50,000 for their house and cleared $20,012. When Randy showed up to get his money and they tried to give him a check, he asked for cash. “This is just a piece of paper,” he said, holding the check. “It isn’t worth anything.” As he left, he said he was going to transfer the money into gold and silver.
The Sunday before they left, the Weavers drove to Fort Dodge for one more Sunday dinner. Lanny stood outside and barbecued steaks, and this time, there were no arguments.
Always the pragmatist, Vicki’s dad offered advice. “Gear down when you’re driving through the mountains.”
In the kitchen, Vicki said they were going to find a place in Idaho or Montana where home schooling was legal. God would show them where.
Jeane was going over everything. Would they have enough fruit? Vegetables? Where would they stay on the way out? Did they have enough clothes?
“I’ve got enough clothes for three and a half years,” Vicki said. “That’s all we’ll need.”
Still, Julie didn’t talk about it with her sister. Maybe they needed to get out in the woods to settle down and return to reality. Surely there was nothing wrong with becoming less materialistic and more spiritual. “If it doesn’t work out, you can always come back,” she said.
Sammy, who was four, was excited for the adventure, hobbling around on his cast. But Sara seemed sad; she was seven and old enough to know what they were leaving behind—security and loved ones. Julie watched Rachel, who was still a toddler. You won’t know me, she thought, but I will always be your aunt.
David and Jeane were going on vacation, and so they said good-bye. David gave one more warning to Randy that he’d better take care of his family, and then Randy and Vicki headed back to Cedar Falls, to finish packing.
A few days later, they stopped by Fort Dodge again on their way out of town. Randy was driving the moving truck, and Vicki followed him in a pickup that pulled a trailer behind it. They eased off the interstate and parked in Lanny’s front yard. Randy climbed out of the moving truck in jeans and T-shirt with a cigarette pocket. Vicki got out of the pickup truck in one of the long denim skirts she’d taken to wearing. They stood on the porch with Lanny and Melanie, Keith and Julie.
Julie looked at the moving truck, loaded down with every possession they hadn’t sold or given away. It reminded her of the Okies moving west, of The Grapes of Wrath, and she couldn’t believe her smart, perfect sister had been reduced to this.
Julie hugged Randy and the kids, and they made their way to the caravan until only Julie, Lanny, and Vicki were left on the porch.
Vicki and Julie cried as they hugged, and Julie held her sister tight. “I’m just so afraid I’ll never see you again.”
“I’m never coming back,” Vicki said. “You’ll have to come see me.”
Julie cried harder and Vicki tried to comfort her. “Don’t worry. We’ll see each other again.”
Vicki hugged her brother, Lanny, too. There never was so solid an Iowa farmer as Lanny Jordison, and he wasn’t one to listen to intuition, but as he and Julie watched their sister drive off, they both had the feeling they would never see her again.