The Monkey Wrench Gang (27 page)

A grim vibration in the rails, coming closer.

“Let’s go.”

Dr. Sarvis is still up on the hill, watching them. “Train’s coming,” he hollers.

“Come on down, Doc,” Smith yells. “We’re gonna shoot.”

Doc comes lumbering down the slope, taking giant strides through the sand, his morning shadow twenty feet long, stretching freely over Gambel oak and scrubby prickly pear and other vegetable organisms. A corona of blazing light shines behind his helmeted head. Accident. He pitches face first down a dune, boots and feet confused, betrayed by—they hear the quiet curse—an innocent shrub. He struggles to his feet again, comes on, upright, dignified, unruffled by mere mishap of gravity and chance.

“
Fallugia paradoxa,”
he explains, wiping sand from his glasses. “Are we ready?”

Of course they hadn’t picked the proper lookout point for Hayduke. He decides to climb up to where Doc has been—quickly. Doc and Smith will join Bonnie back at the blasting machine, Smith to hitch up the shooting wires and relay signals from Hayduke, Doc to supervise Bonnie at the controls.

Under the overhang below the canyon rim, Smith catches up the lead wires and tracing them straight to the box, finds them wound and screwed down fast to the terminals.

“Holy smoke, Bonnie, you already hooked them up!”

“Of course,” she says.

“Well holy Moroni, we was all three out there not ten feet from a hundred pounds of straight dynamite.”

“So?”

Hayduke at the same time is scrambling up the hill, slipping and sliding in the sand, clutching at the hairy prickly pear, the thorny oak. He claws his way to the top, panting like a dog, and looks eastward through the railway cut at the broad snout the blank eyes the rumbling muzzle of locomotive two hundred yards away, coming not fast but steadily, about to pass below him and over the first three charges and onto the bridge.

He looks back in the direction of the blasting crew, sees nobody in sight. Oh,
fuck!
Then Smith emerges from around a hump of sandstone and gives him the ready signal. Hayduke nods. The automatic train advances, blind, brutal, powerful, swaying on the tracks around the bend. Electric arcs flash and crackle as the bow-type trolley, rising and falling in its spring-action frame on the hood of the engine, jumps the synapses in the power line. Behind the engine comes the main mass, eighty loaded coal cars long, rolling into the Page of history at forty-five miles an hour down the grade. Slowing for the curve. Hayduke raises his arm.

Eyes fixed on the fifteenth crosstie back from the bridge, arm upright in guillotine position, he hears, smells and feels the train passing beneath him. The ongoing engine blocks the blasting site from his view. He swings his hand and arm down, a vigorous unmistakable gesture—

And sees, at the moment his hand slaps his hip, the face of a man at an open window in the cab of the locomotive, a man looking up at him, a young man with smooth, tanned and cheery countenance, good teeth, clear eyes, wearing a billed cap and tan twill workshirt open at the neck. True to all tradition, like a brave engineer, the young man returns Hayduke’s wave.

Heart shocked to a stop, brain blanked dead, Hayduke dives into earth with hands locked over skull, waits for the earth to move, shock wave to come, projectiles to flutter past his plugged ears, the cordite
odors creeping up his nose; waits for the screaming to begin. Anger more than horror numbs his mind.

They
lied
, he thinks, the sons of bitches
lied!

“What are you waiting for?”

“I can’t do it,” she moans.

Smith, twenty yards away and helpless, stares at them, at Bonnie stooped over the infernal machine, at Dr. Sarvis stooped over her. She clutches the uplifted handle, her knuckles blanched with strain. Her eyes are shut tightly, squeezing forth at the corner of each eyelid one jewel of a tear.

“Bonnie: push it down.”

“I can’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I just can’t.”

Doc catches a glimpse of the engine thundering over the bridge, passing out of sight into the cut beyond, followed, with only twinkles of daylight intervening, by the unplacated monotony of dark grimy overloaded coal cars. Black dust spreads through the otherwise clean air, accompanied by the grate and grind of steel, a smell of dingy iron, the roar of industry blundering across God’s sweet desert country. Doctor Sarvis feels a surge of awful wrath rise to his craw.

“Are you going to shove that thing down, Bonnie?” His voice is tense with anger.

“I just can’t do it,” she moans, tears trailing down her cheeks. He stands directly behind her; she feels his groin and belly pressed against her back. He reaches around her, wraps his big white sensitive surgeon’s hands over her hands, gripping them fast to the handle of the blasting machine, and forcing her to bend with and beneath him, he rams the plunger through radiant resistance coils hard and deep and true—all the way!—down to the cervix into the very womb of the cushioned box:

Wham!
and—

BLAM!

—he keeps it there.

Oh no, she realizes, a bit late, while chunks and fragments and splinters of fossil fuel and inorganic matter trace parabolic hyperbolas, graceful and fiery, across the blue above her head; it always was his favorite position.

Thank you, ma
^‘
am
.

Hayduke, meanwhile, had waited. When nothing happened he opened his eyes and raised his head in time to see the locomotive rumble over the mined bridge, clear the far side and enter the cut, pulling its train of cars. Sighing with relief, he started to get up.

At that moment the charges went off. The train rose up from the rails, great balls of fire mushrooming under its belly. Hayduke dropped again as pieces of steel, cement, rock, coal and wire hurtled past his ears and soared into the sky. At the same time loaded coal cars, completing their jump, came back down on the broken bridge. The girders gave, the bridge sank like molten plastic and one by one the coal cars—linked like sausages—trundled over the brink, disappearing into the roar the dust the chaos of the gorge.

And on the other side of the bridge?

Trouble. Nothing but trouble. Lines down, power grounded out, the electric locomotive had come to a halt, helpless. Now it was coming back, unwillingly, with locked brakes, sliding powerless toward a multi-million-dollar disaster. Still coupled to the train, the engine was being dragged backward by the weight of the cars falling into the canyon.

Hayduke watched as the young man, the engineer, observer, monitor, whatever he was, came out the side of the cab, climbed two rungs down the steel ladder and jumped. He landed easily, running a few steps down the embankment, and came to a stop in the ditch. Hands on hips he stood and witnessed, like Hayduke, the destruction of his train.

The locomotive slid with shrieking rigid wheels to the shattered bridge, toppled and fell. Out of sight. A moment elapsed: the boom of the crash rose to the sky.

The main body of the train continued rolling down the grade,
off the warped tracks, through the wreckage of the bridge to crash, car after car, repetitive as mass production, down into the pain and confusion of the chasm. Nothing could be done and none were spared. Every single car, like dreaming sheep, bumbled over the edge and vanished.

Hayduke crawled through the brush on hands and knees, rolled off the side of the dune and stumbled down the sand to his companions. He found them still at the blaster, paralyzed, stunned by the roar of smashing coal cars and the grandeur of their deed. Hayduke roused them to flight. Lugging all equipment, the four hurried to the jeep, piled in and on and rode it back to Doc’s car. They split, as planned.

All the way home to camp Doc and Bonnie sang old songs, including everybody’s all-time favorite, “I Been Workin’ on the Railroad.”

George and Seldom did the same.

The nice ranger had a few questions. “You folks enjoying your visit to
Navajo National Monument?” Firelight glimmered on his honest, handsome, thoroughly shaven young face. He looked as a park ranger should look: tall, slim, able, not too bright.

“Excellent,” said Dr. Sarvis. “Excellent.”

“Where are you people from, if I may ask?”

Doc thought quickly. “California.”

“We get a lot of people from California these days. What part of California?”

“Southern part,” Bonnie said.

“How about a drink, Ranger?” Dr. Sarvis said.

“Thank you sir, but I can’t drink on duty. Very kind of you to offer. Noticed your car has New Mexican plates, that’s why I asked. I went to school in New Mexico.”

“Is that so?” Bonnie said. “My husband and I live there now.”

“Your husband’s a doctor?”

“Why yes, as a matter of fact he is,” Bonnie said.

“Saw the caduceus on the car. I was premed myself for a while but the biochemistry was too tough for me, so I switched to wildlife management and now I’m just a park ranger.”

“That’s all right,” said Doc, “there is a place for everyone, however humble, in the general scheme of things.”

“What part of New Mexico?”

“Southern part,” Bonnie said.

“I thought you said southern California, pardon me.”

“I said we’re
from
California. My grandfather here”—Doc frowned—“is from California. My husband is a New Mexican.”

“Mexican?”

“New Mexican. We don’t like racist terms. You should call them Spanish-speaking Mexicans or Americans-with-Spanish-surnames. Mexican is an insult, in New Mexico.”

“A proud, sensitive people,” Dr. Sarvis explained, “with a grand tradition and glorious history behind them.”

“Far behind,” Bonnie said.

“Your husband must be the young fellow with the beard. Driving the blue jeep with the winch on front and the Idaho plates.”

Another brief pause.

“He’s my brother,” Bonnie said.

“Haven’t seen him around today.”

“He’s on his way down to Baja California. Should be in Caborca by now.”

The ranger fiddled with his iron-brimmed Smokey-the-Bear-style ranger hat. “Caborca’s generally found in the state of Sonora.” He smiled sweetly; he had straight white teeth, pink and healthy gums. The flicker of firelight danced on his firmly knotted necktie, his brass insignia, his gold-plated ranger badge, the burnished nameplate over his right breast pocket: Edwin P. Abbott, Jr.

Dr. Sarvis began to sing, softly, to the tune of “Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis,” “Meet me in Caborca, Lorca….”

“What happened to your other friend?” the ranger said, addressing Bonnie.

“What other friend?”

“The owner of that vehicle there.” Nodding toward Smith’s big pickup off in the dark nearby, barely visible in the campfire’s fitful gleam. Decals removed, of course. Old Seldom Seen—where was he?
Back of beyond? Out in the outback? Loning and longing for his wives?

“Really can’t say,” Doc said.

“Can’t say?”

“He means we don’t know exactly,” Bonnie said. “He said he was going for a hike somewhere and would be back in five days.”

“What’s his name?”

Hesitation.

“Smith,” Bonnie said. “Joe Smith.”

The ranger smiled again. “Of course. Joe Smith. How do you like Page?”

“Page?”

“Black Mesa?”

“Black Mesa?”

“Did you hear the news this evening?”

“Sometimes.”

“How do you feel about the energy crisis?”

“Tired,” Doc said. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

“We’re against it,” Bonnie said.

“I’m for it,” Doc said, after a moment’s thought.

“Where were you people last night?”

“Can’t say,” Doc said.

“We were right here by this campfire,” Bonnie said. “Where were you?”

“You left kind of early this morning.”

“That’s right,” Bonnie said. “So what? My brother wanted to get an early start and we went along to see him off, that’s all. Is there any law against that?”

“Now, now,” Doc said.

“I’m sorry, miss,” the ranger said. “I don’t mean to pry into your affairs. Just curious, that’s all. Mind if I take a look inside that car of yours?”

No reply.

“What did you think of the news?” the ranger asked.

Bonnie and Doc remained silent, staring at the fire. The young
ranger, still standing, still turning his big hat in his hands, stared at them.

“I mean the train, of course,” the ranger said.

Doc sighed and glumly shifted his Marsh-Wheeling to the other side of his mouth. “Well …”he said.

“We heard about it,” Bonnie said, “and we think it’s deplorable.”

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” Doc said. “Anarchy is not the answer.”

“Answer to what?” the ranger said.

“Sir?”

“Answer to what?”

“What was the question?”

“We heard it was an automated train,” Bonnie said, “so at least nobody got hurt, I suppose.”

“Automated, all right,” the ranger said, “but there was an observer on board. He was lucky.”

“What happened?”

“According to the news there was some kind of accident at Kaibito Canyon Bridge.” The ranger watched them. No response. “But of course you heard the news.”

“I used to eat in an automated restaurant,” Dr. Sarvis said. “That was damn risky too. I remember one Automat on Amsterdam and 114th when I was a student at Columbia. Automatic cockroaches. Big, smart, aggressive
Blattella germánica
. Frightening creatures.”

“What happened to this observer?” Bonnie asked.

“You didn’t hear?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, it seems part of the train crossed the bridge before the bridge collapsed. The observer had time to get out of the engine before it rolled back into the canyon. The news said the whole train, engine and eighty coal cars, ended up in the bottom of Kaibito Canyon.”

“Why didn’t the observer or engineer or whatever he was just
step on the brakes or step on the gas or whatever you do to a train engine?”

“There wasn’t any power,” the ranger said. “It’s an electric railway. When the bridge collapsed the power line went down with it.”