The Monkey Wrench Gang (51 page)

Well, like Hayduke, he’d make the most of the rain. Should be able to slip around the Search and Rescuers now, hike the jeep trail to the Golden Stairs, climb to Flint Trail and up to Land’s End, Flint
Cove, Flint Flat, Flint Spring, from there an easy ten-mile walk on level ground through the woods to Frenchy’s Spring and another food cache. All he needs now is food. Some beef and bacon and beans, some biscuits and cheese, and he’d be ready for the sixty-mile walk home to Green River.

Mumbling to himself, Smith crawls out of the hole in the rock and lifts his face to the rain. Lovely. Sweet cool rain. Thank you very much, You up yonder. He cups his hands beneath the spout of water at the point of the ledge and drinks. Good, by God, good, but also mighty stimulating to the appetite. Refreshed but hungry he fills the canteen and moves off, up the eroded joint of stone between the towering Fins, as Hayduke has done. But at the exit, where Hayduke went straight ahead toward Lizard Rock, Smith cuts left, westerly and southerly, following a long contour of bench rock around the head of the nearest side canyon. He has only a notion of the time of day, for no trace of the sun is visible, but he
feels like
afternoon; his nerves and muscles tell him he has slept for hours.

The heavy rain continues. Visibility, two hundred yards. Smith strides across a desert of red rock, red sand, scrubby shrubs of cliff rose, juniper, yucca, sage, blackbrush and chamisa, all well scattered, each plant separated from its nearest neighbor by ten feet or more of uncontested rock and sand. No human concealment possible here, but the ledges, gulches, fins and stony depths lie nearby on his left. Nor does he attempt to conceal his tracks; where the most direct route lies across sand, Smith takes it. He knows that he’ll soon be up on solid rock again, on the Stairs trail, and through the gap toward Flint Trail.

His loping pace soon brings him to the jeep track, which he cuts across and parallels for a while until the road is confined between the head of another box canyon and the plateau wall. No choice here; Smith strides down the road, leaving in the wet sand and clay the clear imprint of his big feet. Can’t be helped. The road follows its only possible route, the path pioneered by deer and bighorn sheep twenty thousand years before, along the curving terrace to broader ground,
where he leaves the road with relief, hoping the rain will wash out his tracks before the next patrol comes by.

And if it don’t, he thinks, then it won’t. Smith moves across the contours of the land to higher ground, angling toward the gap in the ridge known as the Golden Stairs, the only trail that leads from the benchlands where he climbs to the plateau above.

Crazy country, half of it perpendicular to the rest, much of it inaccessible even to a man on foot simply because so much consists of nothing but vertical walls. Seldom Seen Smith’s country and the only country in which he feels comfortable, secure, at home.

A true autochthonic patriot, Smith swears allegiance only to the land he knows, not to that swollen bulge of real estate, industry and swarming populations of displaced British Islanders and Europeans and misplaced Africans known collectively as the United States; his loyalties phase out toward the borders of the Colorado Plateau.

He sees headlights passing below, through the rain, one—two—three vehicles like a military convoy creeping over the wet rock, grinding through a muddy wash, passing out of sight around the next turn of the bench. He hears the rumble of a rock fall. Some of them machines ain’t gonna get out of here alive, he thinks, leaving the shelter of his juniper and moving on. God rolls rocks too. Should roll more.

He finds the trail and slogs upward, climbing four hundred feet in close switchbacks to the next bench. Here the trail makes a long traverse to the northeast, following the contour, until another break in the wall is reached. Three hundred feet higher and a mile farther brings Smith into the pass. Below is the upper end of a drainage known as Elaterite Basin; he’s already halfway to the foot of Flint Trail. Beyond, barely visible through the rain, is Bagpipe Butte; above and beyond that the Orange Cliffs, the rim of the high plateau a thousand feet above and still five miles away. The sun is blazing through a hole in the clouds.

Smith rests for a while. Dozes off. He hears gunfire, far away, remote, hardly within the realm of his consciousness. He looks back, toward Lizard Rock, the Maze. Maybe he was dreaming the sound—hearing things.

The rain has stopped. More gunfire, a rolling barrage.

You’re hearing things, he tells himself. The boy can’t be that dumb. Not even George, not even him, could be dumb enough to get in a gun battle with all them, whoever they are in there now, state police, prob’ly, whole goddamned sheriff’s departments of Wayne and Emery and Grand and San Juan counties, not to mention whatever’s left of the bishop and his team of bean farmers and used-car dealers. No, he can’t be; he’s got to be down in the Maze now skinning a deer, that’s his shots I heard. Sounds like a medium-size war, though, to tell the truth.

Too late to turn back. Hayduke wanted to be on his own. Now he is. Two helicopters clatter by, headed for the Maze. Smith gets up and marches on into the late afternoon. The storm clouds are breaking up, drifting eastward. Spokes of sunlight radiate like enormous golden searchlights across the renovated sky. He drags himself the last few feet to the top of Flint Trail.

Starved, soaked, exhausted, blister-footed, cold, Seldom shambles past the tourists huddled on the Park Service viewpoint platform at the rim. The Maze Overlook. Four women, elderly, passing binoculars back and forth, stare at Smith with fear and suspicion, then return to their study of something fascinating taking place off toward the Maze. They watch a panoramic ten-ring circus miles deep and wide. Circling aircraft down there. Red fire, writhing mists of smoke and fog floating out of canyons, a bronze waterfall of liquid mud thundering from the brink of a thousand-foot cliff while moving shafts of heavenly spotlights pick out this point, that point, all the remainder in the shadow of the clouds.

Smith ignores the tourists, seeking only to get beyond this public place into the piney woods as quickly as possible. Ten more miles to Frenchy’s Spring and food. His shortcut takes him past the ladies’ parked car and a picnic table on which they’ve left a big Coleman ice chest containing—denture cream? Preparation H? Food, perhaps?

Smith’s faint knees almost collapse. He senses meat. He hesitates at the table, opens the ice chest, can’t help it, reaches for the topmost package, checks himself. Looks back. Two of the women are gaping
at him, astonished, their eyeglasses catching sunbeams for a moment, blazing in his eyes. He feels in his pocket. One greasy two-bit piece in there—hardly enough. But all he’s got. He drops the quarter on the table and takes two cool packages wrapped in white butcher paper, touched with blood.

One woman shrieks, “You put that back, you filthy thief!”

“Sorry, ladies,” Smith mumbles. He cuddles the packages to his chest and runs off into the woods, drops one, goes on, clomping through muck, pine needles and puddles to a sunny spot near a boulder. Listens. No sign of pursuit.

Good Gawd but I’m tired. He sinks to the ground, opens the package. Two pounds of lean red hamburger reeking with protein. He chomps into it like a starving dog, eating it raw. Eating it all. Gobbling, he hears a car rush down the road. No other sound but the chatter of a squirrel, a choral jabber of bluejays off among the pinyon pines. Evening summer sunshine. Peace. Exhaustion.

Belly fulfilled, Smith leans back against the sun-warmed rock and closes his weary eyes. A chorus of evening birds celebrates the end of the storm; bluebird, pinyon jay, thrush, mockingbird and thrasher sing among the trees, in the high-country air, seven thousand feet above sea level. The sun sinks into archipelagos of clouds, the broken ranges of the sky.

Smith falls asleep. His dreams are strange, troubled—dreams, those shabby and evasive imitations of reality. Poor Smith sleeps….

Or thinks he sleeps. Some sonofabitch keeps kicking at his foot.

“Wake up, mister.”

Whack whack whack
.

“Wake up!”

Smith opens an eye. Forest green pants and shiny shoes. Opens the other eye. A clean fresh pink-cheeked young man in a Smokey Bear hat is glaring down at him, holding in one hand what appears to be a plucked chicken. Another young man nearby, armed with Mace and pistol, raps a billy club against a tree, watching Smith gravely. Both are wearing the uniform and badge of National Park Service rangers.

“Get up.”

Smith groans and pulls himself half erect, sitting up against the boulder. He feels awful, and a dawning sense of disaster does not help. He rubs his eyes, picks at his ears with his little fingers and looks again. Sure enough, a plucked chicken. The young man dangling it before him looks familiar.

“Get up!”

Smith gropes around for his old mashed slouch hat and clamps it on his head. But then irritation sets in. He does not rise. “You fellas go away,” he says. “I’m trying to sleep.”

“We’ve got a complaint against you, mister.”

“What’s the complaint?”

“The ladies said you stole their hamburger and their chicken.”

“What chicken?”

“This chicken.”

Smith swivels his head a bit and studies the naked bird. “Never saw him before.”

“We found it on your trail. You dropped it running away.”

Raising his eyes from the chicken, Smith reads the ranger’s name tag: Edwin P. Abbott, Jr. Now he remembers. “Say,” he says, “weren’t you down there at Navajo National Park in Arizona just a couple months ago?”

“I was transferred. They also say you stole two pounds of hamburger.”

“That’s true.”

“You admit it.”

“Yep.”

“You don’t deny it?”

“Nope.”

The two rangers glance at one another, nod, then return their grave and serious eyes to Smith. Ranger Abbott says, “So you confess?”

“I was starvin’ to death,” Smith explains, “and I think I left them ladies some money. Meant to anyhow. Now you fellas got important
work to do and I don’t want to take up your time; go away and lemme get some sleep.”

“You are under arrest, mister. You’re coming with us.”

“What for?”

“For theft and for camping in a nondesignated camping area.”

“This here’s
my
country.”

“This is a national park.”

“I mean I
live
here. I’m a Utahn.”

“You can explain it to the magistrate.”

Smith sighs and turns away, closing his eyes. “All right, but just lemme get a little more sleep. I am really tired, boys. Just a little more …”he mumbles, fading off.

“Get up.”

“Go to hell,” he whispers dreamily.

“Get up!”

“Zzzzzzzz….” Smith slumps sideways, relaxing into the warm and friendly corner of the rock.

The rangers look at the sleeping Smith, then at each other.

“Why don’t I just Mace the bastard?” the second ranger says. “That’ll wake him up.”

“No, wait a minute.” Ranger Abbott pulls a set of the new disposable plastic handcuffs from his belt. “We’ll handcuff him first. We won’t need the Mace.” Quickly, deftly—for this was one thing he’d been well trained in at the Park Service’s Horace P. Albright Ranger Training Academy at South Rim, Grand Canyon—he loops the bands around Smith’s wrists and draws them tight. Smith stirs feebly, growling in his sleep, but does not resist. Does not even wake up. Does not even care anymore.

Ranger Abbott and his assistant hoist their prisoner to his feet and haul him, his relaxed legs dragging in the duff, back through the woods to the road and their patrol truck. Where to put him now? They prop him up between them in the middle of the pickup’s single seat. Smiling in his dreams, snoring softly, Smith sags against the man on his right.

“Heavy bastard,” the assistant ranger says.

“Don’t worry.”

“What’d we do with that chicken?”

“Left it back in the woods.”

“Don’t we need it? For evidence?”

Ranger Abbott grins at his companion. “Forget the chicken. We have the real chicken right here. Can’t you figure out who this man is?”

The other, shifting uncomfortably under Smith’s dead weight, says after a moment, “Well, I
was
wondering about it. I was thinking he could be. That’s why I thought we should just go ahead and Mace the bastard first. You mean we got Rudolf the Red?”

“We got Rudolf the Red.”

Ranger Abbott starts the engine, picks up the mike and radios news of the capture to his chief.

“Congratulations, Abbott,” the chief ranger replies, through heavy static, “but you didn’t get Rudolf the Red. They shot Rudolf the Red an hour ago. You got somebody else. Bring him in anyhow. And don’t forget your time-and-activity report.”

“Yessir.”

“Shee-it,” says the assistant.

They are about to turn around and drive off when a tourist car pulls alongside. The couple inside look anxious. “Oh, ranger,” the wife calls.

“Yes ma’am?” says Abbott.

“Would you tell us, please”—the woman smiles in faint embarrassment—“where the nearest comfort stations are?”

“Yes ma’am. The comfort stations are beside the parking lot at Maze Overlook and also at Land’s End Viewpoint. You can’t miss them.”

“Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome.”

The visitors drive away, carefully (wet surface conditions). Ranger Abbott guns his engine and performs a screaming U-turn, rear end sashaying all over the road. Gobbets of mud splatter the roadside pinyon pines.

“I like this work,” he says, roaring off to district headquarters.

“Yeah, me too,” the assistant ranger says.

“You get so many opportunities to be
helpful
to people.”

Ten thousand square miles of wilderness, dreams Seldom in his dream, and not a pot to piss in. Comfort stations! George Hayduke ol’ buddy, we sure need you now. Rudolf the Red is dead.

Well, it all depends on your point of view, thought Hayduke as he paced
through the rain toward the last-observed location of Lizard Rock. If you look at it from the buzzard’s point of view the rain is a drag. No visibility, no lunch. But from my point of view, from the guerrilla’s point of view—