The Monkey Wrench Gang (26 page)

“Grab the tools. Everything out of sight.”

Hayduke pushes the leg wires of the third charge out of view while Smith dashes toward the dunes dragging spade and pick. Hayduke scans his work, seeking some flaw in the arrangement, but all seems properly concealed.

They scuttle for cover, lugging their tools, leaving fat footprints all over the place. Can’t be helped. They lie down and wait, listening, and hear the hum and rattle of one electric track car coming down the grade. Hayduke takes a peep, sees the square yellow cab on wheels, open windows, three men sitting inside, one at the throttle eyeballing the rails ahead.

Bonnie and Doc are down behind the bushes. Bonnie, on her belly in the sand, sees the track car coming her way, slowing at the bridge, stopping in the middle of it for a moment, starting again and passing through the deep cut beneath her (sound of laughter) and on around the curve, electric sparks flying from the trolley intersections, motor whining away into the stillness, out of sight and out of hearing. Gone.

The track crew had paused on the bridge, she realized suddenly, to look at her art-nouveau graffiti on the cement of the abutment, her red and black and decorative writing on the wall,
CUSTER WEARS AN
ARROW SHIRT—RED POWER
!

She unbuttoned her sweater as the sun began to bear down, put on her smoky shades, adjusted the brim of the huge and nonchalant hat. Garbo on guard duty. She watched Hayduke come tramping out of hiding, carrying what looked like a big metal spool. Squat and powerful, he resembled more than ever an anthropoid ape. Darwin was right. Seldom Seen Smith came out with him, lean and long. Mutation; the vastness of the gene pool; the infinite variables of combination and permutation. Who, she wondered vaguely, shall father my child? She saw no likely prospects in the vicinity.

Watching Hayduke kneeling by the tracks, she saw the knife blade flashing in his hand, watched him splice and tape a connection
of unsheathed wire. When the fourth set of connections was completed, Hayduke joined the free ends of the blasting-cap wires to the shooting wires, making a single-series blasting circuit. He then unreeled the lead wires away from the bridge along the rim of the canyon to a point sheltered from the blast site, under an overhang. He set the reel down and followed the wires back to the railway; as he walked he pushed the wires over the edge of the canyon rim, letting them hang there hidden from view—from the view, that is, of any eyes coming from the east. At the tracks he took the exposed wires and taped them to the web of the rail, beneath the flange, concealing them there as well.

She watched him talking with Smith; saw Smith punch Hayduke lightly in the ribs, saw them place hands on each other’s shoulders like a pair of Sumo wrestlers squaring off. There was something in the way they grinned at each other, something in the way they handled each other, that irked and offended her. All men at heart, she thought—at bottom should I say?—are really queer. The way ballplayers pat one another on the fannies, running onto the field or coming out of the huddle. The Greek quarterback and the nervous center. Queer as clams. Though of course none would have the decency or honesty or nerve to admit it. And of course they really are united against women. The swine. Who needs them? She stared fondly at the two oafs below, fondling one another. A pair of clowns. Queer as abalones. At least Doc, he has some dignity. Though not much. And where was he, by the way? She looked, looked hard, and finally made him out in the shade of a tree, head drooping, falling asleep on his feet. Jesus, she thought; this criminal anarchy is boring work.

Her name lofted through the sunlight. Faces facing her. That bisyllabic tremor rippled through the air, spreading past and beyond.
Bonnie!
…

Hayduke, Doc and Bonnie huddled at the spool of wire. Smith was working on the bridge. Hayduke cut the leads, while Doc and Bonnie watched, separated the wires and peeled two inches of insulating plastic from each shining strand of copper.

“These fuckers,” he explains, “go here.” He touches them to
the two terminals on the blaster. “This little fucker”—dropping the wires aside and lifting the handle of the blaster—“goes up like this.” He lifts it all the way. “When the wires are connected to the terminals and you push down hard, hard as you can—don’t be afraid to hurt the machine, you can’t hurt her, just go ahead and try to knock the bottom out—when you do that you send a current through the circuit and the juice sets off the caps. The caps detonate the primers and the primers detonate the charges and—well, you’ll see. But you have to push that handle down
hard
. Like cranking an old-fashioned country telephone; if you don’t crank hard enough you don’t send out any signal.” Looking at Bonnie. “You listening to me, Abbzug?”

“Yes, I’m listening, Hayduke.”

“What did I say?”

“Listen, Hayduke, I have a master’s degree in French literature. I’m not a high school dropout like some people here I could mention though I won’t name any names even though they’re in spitting distance.”

“Okay, try it then.” He screwed the caps off the blasting machine terminals and placed his fingertips on them. “Go ahead. Slam that handle down. Give me a charge.”

Bonnie grabbed the handle and pushed it down. It clunked against the top of the wooden casing.

“I felt a tingle,” Hayduke said. “A tiny tingle. Try it again.
Slam
it down. Knock the bottom out.”

She pulled the handle up, took a breath and drove it down. As it crashed into the box Hayduke’s hand bounced up in sharp galvanic reflex.

“That’s better. I felt it that time. Okay, Bonnie, you want to be the blaster on this operation?”

“Somebody has to do it.”

“Doc can stand by, check the procedure, back you up. I’ll be where I can see the train coming. When the train’s in the right spot I’ll give you a signal, like this.” He raised an arm and paused. “When I raise my arm you pull up the blaster handle. Keep your eyes on
me. When I lower my arm”—he slashed it downward—“you ram that handle down. Hard!”

“Then what?”

“Then we get the hell out of here. You and Doc take the station wagon; me and Seldom’ll take the jeep. We should have at least an hour before they send up airplanes, so drive like hell for an hour, then stop somewhere under a tree, wait for evening. Take the old dirt road to Shonto. We’ll meet back at Betatakin tonight to celebrate the victory. Don’t look up at airplanes. Pale faces show up good from the air. Take it easy, keep cool, if anybody talks to you make like tourists. Put on your Bermuda shorts, Doc.”

“Haven’t got any, George, but I’ll try.”

“And you, keep those dark goggles on. Don’t let the Indians see that crazy gleam in your eye.”

“Sure,” Bonnie says. “Where’s the bathroom?” And she disappeared over the sand dunes.

Doc looked morose, staring after her.

“What’s wrong?” says Hayduke.

“Nothing.”

“You look sick, Doc.”

Doc smiled, shrugged. “A little black magic is leaving my life.”

“You mean her? You want to talk about it now?”

“Maybe later,” Doc says. He returned to his lookout station.

Hayduke joined Smith at the bridge, laboring on the east abutment with pick and shove.

“This here’s slave work, George.”

“I know it,” says Hayduke. “We need a jackhammer and a compressor like everybody else has. Let’s study this project some more.”

They leaned on their tools and contemplated the job. It appeared, at the present rate of progress, that two weeks of steady work would be required to hand-dig bore holes between abutment and canyon wall. Hayduke decided to attempt a simpler if less certain tactic.

“We’ll try to cut the beams,” he said. “Right there at the joints. Forget the abutment, we don’t have time.” He glanced at his watch. “We should have half an hour left. If that train ain’t early.” He looked
up at Doc on his lookout; all clear. And who knows how much stray current—come to think of it—is flowing through these rails? The all-electric railway. Fifty thousand volts above our heads. Ionized air. Jesus Christ. Should have used the safety fuse. But we need precise timing. Stick with the plan.

He knew he had left the lead wires shorted out, away from the blasting machine. But a child, even Bonnie Abbzug, could hook them up. Where is that girl, goddamn her?

Nerves, nerves. He climbed to the tracks and disconnected the lead wire from the leg wire, breaking the circuit. Now he felt a little better. Three human lives hanging around. Four, counting his own, if you wanted to count his own. Should have done this job himself, or with Smith only. Doc and Bonnie, those innocents, bringing them along, there was his real mistake.

Better hurry. “How much?” Smith was saying.

How much? Yeah, the I beams. About two feet high at the web. Should have figured this all out before. An inch thick. He checked his demo card: 9.0 pounds. Flanges a foot wide and about—he crawled down under the bridge and measured them with the rule printed on the card—about exactly seven-eighths inch thick. He consulted the printed table: 9.0 for the web plus 8.0 for the two flanges adds up to 17.0 pounds of TNT. For each beam. We got three beams. That’s one whole case and then some, or, about—let’s see, unless I’ve miscalculated somewhere; let’s see, old Smith standing there waiting, looking worried, Doc worried, that Abbzug wench fooling around somewhere, shit, should have used a pressure release—51.0 pounds. TNT. Add 10 percent for dynamite. Straight dynamite: 56.1.

“We better bring both cases,” he said.

They got them, brought them back and set them down on the concrete ledge under the bridge. Hayduke cut the sealing tape, lifted the cover from the box and opened the polyethylene liner. The cartridges, sleek and fat in their waxy red wrappings, snugly packed, 102–106 per box, looked—well, looked definitely potent. Sensitive to shock and friction, highly inflammable—Hayduke’s hands trembled
slightly as he removed the cartridges, in bundles, from the box. Smith opened the other box.

“Don’t like this stuff, George.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Hayduke lied.

“Ain’t sure I want to.”

“I don’t blame you. Dangerous to get used to it. Let me fix the charges. You get the sacks out of the jeep.” He counted off the dynamite sticks, thirty-four to a bunch, added five more for good luck, and taped them together.

“What sacks?”

“There’re a dozen burlap sacks in the front of the jeep, under the passenger seat. We’ll fill them with sand to tamp the loads with. Where’s that box of caps?”

“Right here, George.” Smith rose, disappeared.

Hayduke primed the center cartridge in the first bundle, tied it with a half hitch, pushed the primer back into place and taped the assembly to the inside of the first I beam, letting the leg wires dangle to the ledge. He prepared and placed the second and third charges. He linked the leg wires to the shooting wires. The circuit was again complete, all but the final connections to the blasting machine. All loads in place. Smith returned with the sacks. They filled them and tamped the charges.

“We’re ready to shoot,” Hayduke says.

Bonnie was coming toward them. Smith lowered his voice and said, “You sure you want to let her handle the blaster?”

Hayduke hesitated, glancing at Bonnie, before looking back at Smith. Sweating, trembling with nervous fatigue, they stared at each other. The smell of hairy armpits in the air. The smell of fear. “Seldom,” he says, “call it … democracy.”

Smith frowned. “Who?”

“Democracy. You know … participation. We got to let Bonnie take part.”

Smith looked uncertain. Sweat glistened like grease on the pale stubble of his upper lip. “Well,” he says, “I don’t know….”

“Complicity,” Hayduke adds. “Right? We can’t afford to have any innocent parties with us anymore. Right?”

Smith studies Hayduke. “You don’t trust nobody, do you, pardner?”

“Not right away. Not too quickly.”

Abbzug comes breezing up, hat down on her back, a halo of sunshine backlighting her mahogany hair.

“So all right,” she says breezily, “let’s cut the crap. There’s work to be done around here.”

“Where’s your hat?” snarls Hayduke.

“This?” She offers the bonnet.

“Your hard hat!”

“You don’t have to fly off the handle, Hayduke. What are you anyway, some kind of manic paranoid? When’s the last time you saw your shrink? Bet my shrink can lick your shrink.”

“Where is it?”

“I don’t know.”

Smith knelt by the tracks, his hand and ear on a rail. Solemn vibrations in the iron.

“There’s something for sure coming, George. Right now. Something big.”

A lonesome hoot owl called. They looked up to the crown of the eastern cutbank, at Dr. Sarvis silhouetted against the morning sun. Both his arms were stretched high, hands fluttering like frantic birds. The binoculars dangled from his neck, swinging in alarm. “Train!” he shouts.

“How far?” Hayduke shouts back.

Doc raises binoculars, readjusting the focus, and studies the scene to eastward. He lowers the glasses, turns again.

“About five miles,” he shouts.

“Okay, come on down. You—” Hayduke says to Bonnie, “put this on your goddamn head.” Giving her his own hard hat; she puts it on, it drops around her ears. “Get back to that blasting machine. But don’t raise the handle till I give you the signal. And don’t come out from under the overhang till I say it’s safe.”

She stares at him, eyes bright with panic and delight, a twitch of the cynical smile touching her lips.

“Well,” he says, “what are you gaping at me for? Take off.”

“All right all right
all right
, don’t get excited.” She dashes away along the canyon rim.

Seldom Seen meanwhile is gathering up the tools and hoisting the leftover half case of dynamite to his shoulder. The box of caps, the crimpers, the bits and pieces of wiring, the roll of tape, still lie on the concrete ledge under the bridge, against the abutment where Bonnie has sprayed, in gorgeous red with charcoal black embroidery, the legend:
HOKA HEY
!
HOSKINNINI RIDES AGAIN
!