No Compromise In Defense of Mother Earth!
We Stand For What We Stand On!
AMERICAN WILDERNESS:
Love It or Leave It Alone!
GOLIATH Go Home!
Syn-Fuels Is Sinful! Sunshine Is Good!
See One Grand Canyon You’ve Seen Them All!
BLM Means Bad Luck, Mother!
CAUTION: Land Rapers At Work!
Save Our Canyons: SOC It To The BLM!
Nuke Pukes Eat Carnotite!
Radiation Is Good For Who?
Down With Empire, Up With Spring!
Etc., with exclamation mark the clearly favored weapon of punctuation. (There was a time men loved ideas; now they get by with slogans.) The placards and flags lent a jolly, festive, subversive air to the occasion but the press, the media, the TV cameras and videotape recorders, though notified, had failed to show. They’d covered an Earth First!® demo only the month before, in the same region and for the same hopeless cause — why repeat themselves? Time to move on. On this day, for example, most of the Utah-Arizona media corps — and who else could care less? — had assigned itself to the twentieth anniversary celebration of the erection of the Four Corners Boundary Monument, an obelisk of cement and brass four feet high (economy model) planted upon that theoretical ideal Euclidean point where the four states of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah meet, each to the others, in an arbitrary spatio-temporal surveyor’s event of total perfect, absolute and neo-Platonic non-significance. With speeches by Governors Lamm and Anaya, Babbitt and Bangerter, emceed by the Bureau of Land Management’s own beloved boss bureaucrat Bob “Beefburger” Burford, also known as Burford the Hereford, himself another public-lands welfare rancher appointed to his job in order to defend the public lands against people like himself. Dracula in charge of the blood bank. Reynard to caretake the chicken coop.
The whole world, therefore, was not watching the meeting this day of Mitsubishi with the rearguard of Earth First! (Exclamation mandatory.) No television, no radio, no video, not even the morning or evening or local papers, nothing, nobody, no one reportorial but that seedy old buzzard from nowhere who called himself a “literary journalist” and sometimes appeared at events like this, listening carefully, nodding, smiling, deaf as a stump, taking notes, getting his facts wrong but interviewing the prettier women at exhaustive length, exploiting public bravery for private profit and calling it … calling it what? He called it Art. Nobody knew his name, but his T-shirt read “Readin’ Rots the Mind.” Disregarded by all, he faded quickly and naturally into the background whenever violence loomed, as it always did when Earth First! appeared.
The crowd refused to budge, although the operators revved their engines, raised and lowered their gleaming dozer blades in threatening gestures, backed off and re-advanced and pawed the ground a couple of times, like timid grizzly bears not quite certain exactly who was king of the ridge. Finally they simply stopped, motors idling — always cheaper to keep a diesel running than to shut it down and start it up — and waited for their support team, the BLM police-trained ranger in the pickup truck to arrive and disperse the mob.
But looking back the dozer operators could see no sign of the BLM pickup, or of the four-person survey crew redoing a survey job they had completed four times so far, or of any wandering deputy sheriff looking for trouble. Earth First! had alerted the media but forgot or failed to do the same for the Law, obeying the sound principle that there is no situation so bad that the cops can’t make it worse.
No help coming, the road-builders perceived, except that towering mushroom cloud of smoke and dust, always back there far in the rear, and the vague rocking yellow form, within and below, of GOLIATH, Super-G.E.M., advancing slow and sure but still ten miles behind.
Meanwhile the rioters besieged the two operators with cold beer, organic apples, bean sprout sandwiches and wry advice.
“Chentlemen,” said the tall woman, leveling her rare sensational green eyes upon the patient bearded one, “in Norge vee luff your Grand Canyon off Arida zona. Vee neffer dream you tink to dig it up for making thermonuclear bombshells.”
“Lady,” he said, and groped for answers — “Lady, I need the job. Got a wife, seven kids, a pony and a half-ton four-by-four with camper, $229 a month.”
“You call me Erika,” she said, “I call you Joe.”
“My name is Orval.”
“Oral?”
“Orval. Orval Jensen. You’re a nice girl, Erika, but please get your hand off that fuel tank cap, please. Takes two hands to unscrew it anyhow. Unless —” He held up one huge oil-grimed sinewy paw and grinned at her.
“Oh yes, Joe, I see you ferry ferry strong man. So vye you bulldoze zis beautiful canyon off Grand Canyon?”
“This ain’t Grand Canyon. We ain’t nowhere near the goddamned Grand Canyon. This one’s called Lost Eden Canyon or some dumb name like that.”
“But iss part of Grand Canyon. Vill pollute zee drainage, destroy desert turtle habitat, destroy beautiful cottonwood trees and waterfalls and swimming pools.” Squatting long-legged on the mud-caked steel tread at his side, one slender bare arm resting on the fuel tank behind his back (hand on the cap), she gazed sadly, deeply, greenly into the impassive and opaque black orbs of Orval Jensen’s tractor goggles. Her breasts heaved slightly, nipples aroused from the bounty of her emotion, heart and feelings ill-concealed by the sweat-dampened T-shirt. The old buzzard hovering near, making his mental notes, groaning with lust, observed this dialogue with his usual ambivalent interests. “Vye Joe?” she asked, “vye?”
He tried not to notice. Hands spread in helpless confusion, mouth agape, Orval raised his goggles to the sky — blocked by the steel roof — and said, “Christ, lady, what do you want from me?” Then he looked at her, or seemed to look at her, from behind the goggles, and said, “What’s more important to you, people or a goddamn desert turtle?”
She considered the question. She thought about it while the man waited. At last she said, gently and softly, “Vye not haff both, Joe?” And she explained, simply, briefly.
Hah! thought the buzzard, reading her lips, she’s hit it, square on the head. While those young punks on the other side of the engine block, funneling emery powder into the crankcase via the dipstick pipe, missed the whole thing.
Orval was silent, thinking hard. The odor of burning particle board floated on the air. People and nature, he thought. Too many people, no more nature. Just enough people, plenty of nature for all. Nature or people? Or nature and people? Think, Orval, think. It was hard. Especially when you’re urgently desperately suddenly full-bore in love.
At the same time, while Orval thought, two young women with beers and the goat-bearded young man with the curly horns and fipple-fingered wood recorder assaulted the pink-cheeked sunglassed teenaged driver of the other Mitsubishi. She refused to look at them, refused to speak, ignored the offer of a beer, even a cold Pepsi or a warm orange.
“My name’s Pete,” said the piper. “You ever been down in this canyon, miss?” No answer. “I tell you, it’s the prettiest place in the Arizona Strip. This side of Pariah Canyon, anyhow. You been there I suppose.” No reply. “No? You live around here? Fredonia? Kanab? Hardrock?” No response. “I live at Vermilion Cliffs,” he went on. “Got a nice tepee there. Row boats down the Grand for a living. Dories, mainly. Ever been down the river in a dory? No? There’s nothing like it. It’s fun and it’s real.” He paused; silence. She would not carry the conversational ball. “Though sometimes it’s not real fun,” he admitted.
“Come on, let her alone,” said one of the two with Pete. “She wants to mind her own business, let her.”
“There’s somebody coming anyhow,” the other said. (The one with the canteen full of blowsand.) “We’d better get back in the line.”
The Earth First! platoon reformed its body chain across the survey route, elbows linked in elbows, banners streaming in the breeze, as the BLM patrol truck finally reached the scene. The truck stopped, wh
iptail quivering, the dust cloud billowed on, enveloping all present in a floating veil of finely pulverized Great Basin Desert soil. The driver surveyed the situation, reported by radio to district headquarters, shut off engine and climbed out.
A rangerette. Another female, naturally — and why not? why the hell not? — stoutly built and looking stern. She wore the uniform, the badge, the massive belt, the ammo clips, the can of Mace, the handcuffs, the solid two-foot six-celled Mag-light that doubled as a club, and of course, on her right haunch, the huge holstered high-caliber piece, loaded with hollow points, that weighed as much as all the rest of her hardware together. The name tag above her bulging right-hand breast pocket identified her as “Virginia H. Dick.” Ironically, she may or may not have been a virgin. Uncomfortably, her nurturing, muscular, heavy flesh swelled at hip and thigh, straining the seams of the trousers she wore like a man.
Actually she was only a shy sweet well-meaning terrified rookie rangerette.
“ ‘Kay,” she barked, glaring at the protestors through bulbous bug-eyed purple shades. Let pass one beat of time. Then said, “Seems to be the trouble here?”
Fists on hips she glared at Erika and the near-naked young man with four-foot tool anchoring the center of the line. She glared at Pete the piper and the sweet young things propping him up from either side. She surveyed the entire row of silent Earth First!ers, from left to right and back again. No one said a thing. Her lip curled with disdain. (Upper lip only.)
“Who’s charge this clown show?” Erika raised one hand. “Yes?” the ranger said. “Speak up.”
“Pardon, sir,” said Erika. “Vee iss no one in charge.”
“Looks it. You the leader?”
“No sir. Vee all leaders.”
Smiles broke out upon the line of earnest faces. “Yeah,” somebody yelled, “we got no leader. We’re all leaders.” This fellow looked right and left for approval.
“That’s right,” yelled another, “we’re all leaders.” Cheers.
“ ‘Kay!” barked the ranger, lifting one hand for silence. She glared at them all. “So who’s the spokesman?” No one spoke. “Gimme a spokesman, spokeswoman, spokesperson. Anybody.” A faint smile crossed her face. “Gimme a spoke.” Again she glared at Erika. “You there, Miss Cutie Pie. You the spoke?”
Murmurs of objection from the crowd.
Erika stared right back, green eyes blazing. “Excuse, sir, I am not zee spoke. Vee haff no spoke.”
“Then shut up.” More growls of shock and anger on the line.
“But I speak.” Shouts of approval. “I speak,” said Erika, “because I luff America and because I luff your beautiful free speak and your beautiful canyon land.” Cheers, whistles and the bold flourish of a recorder. “I speak because my heart it cannot be silent.” She placed one hand upon that fragrant sweat-filled cleft between her breasts. “I speak because I luff zee desert wilderness. I speak because I cannot sit aside, like bush, like stone, like stupid chump, when zee big machine comes every day closer to ziss place vee luff like home.”
Standing tall, back arched, head high, black hair flying, Erika extended her fighting Viking arm full length, and pointed with unshaking hand and straight imperious forefinger at the distant pall of smog, the alien shape, the particle of harsh light that jerked along upon an oblique course, with low but constant grinding irritation, toward them from the east northeast.
“Zat!” she cried, “zat ting zey call what how you say, zat iron brute, zat steel Tyrannosaurus RAX, zat great ugly beast of Armageddon Gog Magag GOLIATH!” She paused for final effect. “Vee here to stop him!” Hurrahs and applause. “Vee here to crush him like a bloody mouse! Zank you.”
A moment of doubt, then a shower of cheers, applause, and shouts of defiance from her twenty-nine co-leaders. Smiling happily, proudly, Erika bowed to right and left, clasped hands together above her head and stood like a champion. The piper raised his recorder to his mouth, lips to fipple, fingers to fingerholes, and burst forth in Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, the most tragic piece of music ever written.
The ranger waited, giving the crowd its big moment, then raised her hand again. The joy waned, tapered off, died into stillness from lack of good organization.
The ranger smiled. “Pretty speech, honey.” Poking a finger beneath her shades, the ranger rubbed at something in her eye. “But now you got to get zee hell out off zee way. Zeese mens —” Too easy; she checked herself. She gestured toward the man and girl on the bulldozers. “Those two have work to do. You’re trespassing. You have no permit to demonstrate. You’re holding up construction on a Federal project. You’re threatening life and safety of men and equipment engaged in lawful bona fide pursuance. I’m giving you two minutes to disperse. If you do not disperse I am calling the county sheriff and the department of public safety and the BLM Helicopter S.W.A.T. Team and placing each and every one of you under arrest on multiple charges good each for six months in the county slammer and fines of not more than and not less than five thousand dollars per individual.”
Nobody moved.
The operating engineers revved up their sixteen-cylinder Mitsubishi engines, brandished their dozer blades, twitched steering levers causing the machines to pivot left and right, treads grinding down on earth, on sand, on cliffrose and sego lily, on gopher hole and badger den and kit fox burrow. A dung beetle died in the first bloom of youth. A horned toad, lapping up ants at an ants-nest hole, was crushed flat as a spatula. Ten thousand ants were never seen again. …
Arms linked, the mob stood firm.
The ranger glanced at her watch. The time was up. Jeez, she thought, what the hell do I do now? I wish I was back at Michigan State. I wish I was back at the drive-in with Marty and Bobbie, holding hands and popping popcorn and watching Return of the Jedi. Oh Jeez, Momma, where are you now?
She faced the crowd, resumed barking. The lady pit bull. “ ‘Kay,” she barked, “you are all under arrest. Don’t move.” She waited for them to start running, like bunny rabbits. They must have a truck or a bus or something up there on that funny hill. She looked where her thoughts led, to the low mesa on the north where the jeep trail came to a deadend, but saw nothing except a man loafing on a horse, watching the human comedy below. A second horse lounged nearby, tethered to a juniper. Ah for the carefree life of the cowboy, she thought, taking his crap in the bushes, riding the range in search of stray heifers, holding his joint in one hand while scratching his balls with the other.
One of the boys at the barricade flipped the tab on a can of beer. Sounded like the spring release of a hand grenade. Wind blew, the flags rippled: green & white and the black & red and the red & white & blue.
“Don’t move, I said,” the ranger said. Keeping them under arrest with her purple glare, she backed to her truck and the radio. And me with a riot on my hands, some idiot shooting up dirt scoopers, and Bishop Love on my neck about his stolen Caterpillar and all those reports to make out tonight. “I’m going to radio for assistance now,” she yelled. Adding, “If you don’t clear out.” She waited. Run, you idiots.
The line held. Nobody broke.
My God, thought the ranger, maybe they did walk all the way from the river. Thirty miles? Forty? She looked with misgiving at the heap of backpacks on the rim of a ledge above the next drop-off. But the beer? Those flags? Surely not. Anyhow — call for help. You’re entitled. Resisting arrest. Threatening violence. Look at Miss Glamor Puss. … Look at that one in the middle all hide and muscle, thinks he’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, look at that thing he’s got. In his hand. Four feet long if it’s an inch. Call for help. (Help!)
Ranger Dick opened the door of her ranger truck, then saw the roostertail of dust approaching, at excessive speed over the churned-up earth and smashed vegetation of the road-in-progress. Another pickup? Boys from the crew, she thought, bringing reinforcements. A half ton of rednecks in hardhats, that’s what I need all right, got to admit it.
And then the vehicle came close, bouncing over the bumps, a
nd she saw that it was a Ford Bronco four-by-four containing one hat, one head, one man. Stockman hat. Shaven head. Oh shit, she thought, it’s the Bishop. Still mad, I’ll bet. But at least we got the mob outnumbered now: me, Orval, the Bishop, maybe that kid. Four of us and only thirty of them.
The Bronco skidded to a halt. Landfill Co. Search & Rescue Team, said the decal on the door panel. Always searching for something to rescue. Bishop Love got out, politely smiling at Ranger Dick and more sincerely at Orval Jensen on his machine. The smile weakened a bit for the girl on the other; the Bishop did not approve of hiring women to do construction work. But this was a government job, he had to follow certain guidelines, make at least a gesture toward filling the official minority quotas for the official government minorities.
And then Love turned his eyes upon the ragged line of protesters obstructing progress and he abandoned all pretense of civility. He frowned, he scowled, he spat in the dirt. “Them again,” he growled to the ranger and Orval, “the green bigots.”
“I’ll radio for help,” the ranger said. “I warned ‘em …”
Love eyed the demonstrators, their defiant anxious faces, bare limbs, brazen flags. Eyes full of bale, smoldering with contempt, he muttered, “Help hell, it’ll take two hours for the sheriff to get here. I’ll clear them out myself.”
He nodded to Jensen. “Let’s go, Orval.” He jerked his thumb at the teenager on the second machine. “Get down, sweetie, I’ll take it.”
Reluctantly, the girl descended from her high seat. “I ain’t afeared of them hippies, Bishop Love.”
The Bishop patted her helmet as he climbed past her to the controls. “You’re a good girl, honey, but this is man’s work.” Seating himself in the cramped cockpit of this new Nipponese machine, he thought of something else too: “By the way, Ginny,” he shouted at the ranger, above the rumble of motors, “you find my crawler yet?”