. . .Joe holding Marly’s hand in back, Vaughn in the co-pilot seat next to the pilot.
“Head for that!”
Vaughn pointing ahead where the morning light was just then illuminating the peaks surrounding the upper Hellwater. He turned back.
“That fault system I told you about, that I guessed runs under Independence Basin? I’ll bet that’s where the quake hit.”
“You think it’s over with?” Joe yelled.
“Hard to know. Could be more. Aftershocks, or maybe the main strike hasn’t even occurred yet. That’s why I want to get there.”
The plane swept up the valley, the sun behind, rising quickly, speeding it on, they soon crested the divide and soared out over Independence Basin.
“Will you look at that!” Vaughn cried.
He pointed to a light-colored line across the north face of Mount Contact. “There, you see, orogeny in action.”
“What’s that?” Joe yelled.
“Lusty mountain building,” Vaughn laughed, “From here, I’d say the displacement is ten to fifteen feet. Crustal slippage at that rate, every couple thousand years, that’s a mile over a million years, there’s your mountain range. A geological instant. Incredible!”
Joe, eyes pressed to the windows, amazed at the power that could move a block of earth like that, caught sight of something, a movement in the trees. Then nothing.
Vaughn snapping picture after picture, hollered, “Go lower there; follow that scarp there.”
The pilot, not as fascinated by the moment, balked. “I don’t know, Vaughn.”
“It’s okay, get lower,” Vaughn ordered, and the pilot reluctantly dipped them nearer the ground. “Look at that rock, for crying out loud! It’s shaking like jelly.”
Joe noticed a ripple shoot through the trees, eerily silent, then suddenly, a whomp of noise, and something threw the plane up and sideways.
“Jesus God, what the. . .that’s no cross-current!” the pilot cried as the plane spun and whined, while below, the ground buckled. Trees bent sideways. Puffs of dirt spewed along the fault line as though a gaseous flour were venting from the bowels of the earth. Vaughn yelled something but it was lost in a deafening roar. Then Mount Contact’s north face exploded.
For less than a split second, a lull, a moment suspended, then the entire ridge blew out laterally into the sky, and as percussive shockwaves of air tossed the plane, the shattered mountainside fell in a torrent down upon the basin floor.
The pilot grappled with the controls, crying out, “I got to go up!”
“No!” Vaughn countermanded, “not yet.”
In minutes the avalanche of boulders had plummeted over the basin headwaters and shot high up the other side. Swirls of residual slides clattered in every direction as the mammoth rockslide settled. A storm of rolling dirt obscured everything but the high peaks and the gaping wound slashed across out of Mount Contact.
In the plane, silence but for the roar of the engines. Joe thunderstruck. A landscape so permanent, fractured then destroyed in seconds. He thought, in the shadow of such calamity, how inconsequential he was, and yet his life, in its insignificance, seemed more valuable to him now than ever before. He felt like he had been given a second chance.
Vaughn turned to say, “You two? You remember this! You’ll never see anything like it again. Ever!
Joe could feel Marly shivering, and realized his body was shaking in the same frequency, like they were one. Like he didn’t know himself anymore. He gripped her hand tight.
Vaughn, hurriedly writing notes, turned to the pilot. “I’d love to see the looks on those Forest Service smart-alecs now.”
“Lucky it’s so remote,” the pilot said. “No people, no casualties.”
Joe dropped Marly’s hand. A hammerblow hit inside against his chest, like a boulder had landed on his lungs.
Scotty.
“SURE IS OBVIOUS from up here, isn’t it?” Norman mused, the plane now directly over Sweetgrass Moraine, the ridge a perfect roll of boulders and glacial till across the narrow breadth of the valley. Tall blue stands of jack pine colored the base, flourishes of red alder on the higher slopes, ripening chokecherry thickets blackening each draw. And bisecting it, the slice of river falls where the Hellwater cut a lazy channel through the moraine.
“What’s obvious?” Anne called from behind.
“It’s perfect. Just like Joe said before, that moraine ridge? Alls they have to do is plug up the falls and build the causeway.”
“But you said they ought to do some other surveys, not rush it through like they were doin? What about that?”
“That’s right, I did. I thought that moraine, well, it’s loose, and so’s just bound to fail. That’s why I went to the Corps of Engineers.”
“You did? You went to them?” Joe said, now interested.
“Yup, and I had it all wrong.”
“Why is that?”
“Because moraine is all glacial rounded rock jammed up and glued together with finer and finer grades of till. You put fifty thousand acre feet of water up against it, pressure locks that damn stuff up tight as steel. Impermeable. Couldn’t get any tighter if you welded it.”
Norman looked back at Anne. “So I sure felt like one heck of a fool. That new outfit knew their hydrology darn good after all. A dam there’ll last till kingdom come. Just so long as nothing ever gives it a good jolt.”
Joe leaned forward. “Why, what would happen then?”
“Well, ‘cause what locks up that loose till so tight is steady pressure from the weight of a reservoir. If something were to set it vibrating, break the surface tension, then that water would seep in a little here, little there, then whoosh, there goes your dam collapsing like a sand castle. They had a dam just like that fail over there in Idaho, he told me. Dang fools built it on top of a fault.”
“Well Jesus,” Joe exclaimed, “don’t they know about that Independence earthquake?”
“Oh sure. Asked that first thing. They said no, it’d pretty much have to be right on a fault itself to have to worry about it. And that Independence Basin fault is miles further up.”
Joe sat back, blood pounding, new sweat beading his brow. Looking down over the slow trickle of the Hellwater Falls, the river so low it ran brown, that same muddy brown it ran in the aftermath of the landslide. . .
. . .”That’s odd.”
Vaughn Marlowe noticed it on the return flight down the river.
“What is?” Marly asked.
Neither had yet noticed Joe’s ashen face.
“Down there, how the Hellwater is perfectly clear flowing into Sweetgrass Moraine, but it’s completely muddy where it spills out.” He tapped his pencil on his notebook. “That has to mean that’s where the actual fault is. Under Sweetgrass Moraine.”
“I don’t see.”
Marly only half listening, thinking about Alberta.
“No, there’s no scarp because the moraine overlays and obscures it. But obviously it slipped, quite a bit, that river’s loaded with soil. Hell, so that’s why the cataracts are there in the first place. Damn!”
“What?”
“Just wish I was staying; I’d document it all up. Nobody knows. Hell, I’d get to name it.”
Joe not listening. Not even thinking. His stomach knotted, repeating to himself, Scotty would have got up and gone down. . .he’d have been well out of there. He’d have left at dawn. He’d have seen them gone and left, and. . .he’d have left.
Joe looked down, searching, scanning, how the Hellwater turned from clear blue whitewater to black brown murk, but he didn’t see what Vaughn saw. Vaughn saw geology. Joe saw his hopes churning ominously foul.
“I gotta go back, Vaughn.”
“Joe?” Marly said, only then noticing his colorless face. “What’s wrong?”
“No I. . .really, I gotta get home.”
“I told you, Joe,” Vaughn said, “You can’t just. . .”
“Take me back down! You have to.”
Vaughn tu
rned, angry, but then saw Joe’s face.
“What is it?”
“Scotty. My brother. We. . .”
Marly recoiled, her face bloodless.
JOE’S HEART RACING. He knew. A major fault ran under that moraine. . .he knew but no one did. Vaughn Marlowe had never had the chance to document it. The new survey crew, in its hurry, wouldn’t have been obsessively accurate. Or even if they were, there were multi-million dollar reasons to overlook it.
Man oh man. He felt weak. He felt. . .
“The Corps, though, they got to still evaluate the site, right?”
“Na, only when it’s public land. That down there’s all private, like I told you. Bought up by HRC.”
“But wouldn’t they want to bring them in anyway?”
“Well, to play it safe, but it would slow things down considerably.”
“What about the state engineer? They have to review it.”
“Just the construction plans for the dam, which they already did, since it’s been approved. I guess they didn’t find anything wrong.”
Joe’s head was pounding. He had certainly been right; by flying up here, everything had become clear. Everything, he thought, except what he was going to do about it.
WADE STANDING AT the window. Storm clouds blackened the sky. Dead quiet but for the rumble of thunder now and then. What had been a hot summer morning had turned bizarrely cold.
The long slopes of sage brush from ash blue to silver green.
The dogs come back to their shelter.
A chilling breeze turned up the heavy long leaves of the willow. He buttoned his shirt.
In the window itself, the darkened afternoon as background light, the reflection of an unfamiliar strapping young man. He breathed on it and fogged the image, then used the sleeve of his shirt to rub it out. Wondering, how many times would you breathe in your life? How many breaths already taken, how many more to come? Day in day out, hour by hour, minute after minute, your life just one breath after the next. Like Father Sterling’s parable about the sissy who had to roll a boulder up a hill every day, only to have it fall back down again at night. Day after day.
Boring.
He felt sad. He was used to this place; he was part of things here. The land, the weather, the machines and animals. The taste of beer and scalding black coffee. The silences. Like he’d always lived here. And in a few days? Like none of this would have even happened.
He felt sad, and—even worse—now another headache coming on.
“You still here?”
Frances, at the table, hadn’t said anything in so long Wade had forgotten about her, so lost in thought he reminded himself of poor old Emma Meeks, how she spent all those hours, just staring out the window.
“I don’t want to go. . .no matter what Joe says. I don’t see why I don’t have any say in anything, ever.”
“That’s Joe for you.”
She drank from her ever present jar of wine.
Wade watched the silver-black clouds cover the peaks up the Hellwater. The center of what he could see was slowly fading, which soon would mean flashing lights, spinning, nausea.
“Think I’ll go lie down.
“What about the jeep?” Frances said. “You pull it up like I said?”
“Pull it up?”
“Got to tell you every damn thing, I guess.”
Wade looking at the jeep out front imagining it running over Joe Meeks.
“Oh man,” he said.
“What?”
“I was imagining something terrible.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Joe getting killed.”
“Ah. So what was the terrible part?”
She raised up on her cane. Wade went to help but she flinched at him.
“Never mind that; let’s get goin.”
“Going where? I’m not leaving till I have to.”
“Quit the back sass, you. I about had it. Bring that along too like I told you.”
She pointed at the old shotgun resting on the rack of antlers hung on the wall.
“I don’t got to tell you to get shells, I hope,” she said, caning her way out the front door.
“Shells?”
“You’re deaf now too? What good’s a .12 gauge if you don’t got shells. They’re in the box in the closet. An my wine, don’t forget that.”
He left and returned, catching up to Frances at the jeep, toting the almost empty shell box, the jar of wine, the shotgun.
“There’s only one shell left,” Wade said
“Well how damn many do you think it takes?”
“For what?”
Frances hobbled to the passenger’s side, pried open the door, and struggled in.
“Are you gettin in or waitin for Christmas?”
“I’m supposed to drive?”
He got behind the wheel without an answer. Though the only vehicle he’d driven was the tractor, from that, and from watching others, he knew more or less what to do. He started it easily, but driving was something else again. He lurched it forward, stalled it, choked and killed it, and did it all over again. Frances sat wordlessly and not even aware. Concentrating hard, he got down the lane and made the main road. He pulled out in the direction of town.
“Where you goin?”
“I don’t know; I thought you. . .”
“If you don’t know, what’re you doin drivin? Can’t you men keep a damn thing in your head?”
She shifted irritably in her seat.
“Where the hell am I? Damn I hate not knowin where I am.”
While she got her bearings, Wade turned on the heat, and soon warm air began to pour from the vents.
“Then just turn around and go up toward Independence, I don’t give a damn.”
Wheeling up the road, squinting and rubbing his eyes, it took so much concentration, all the worse as the road and his vision narrowed. As they gained elevation, the storm clouding out the sun, Wade felt for the headlight switch and pulled it. His eyes erupted with light in the rim of his vision.
Frances directed him off the mining road onto an open ridge, which he followed up as far as he could go. She said stop. Managed to get herself out. Wade trailed her as she grabbed her wine, hobbled to a boulder, and sat down against it.
“Well?”
She glared up at Wade.
“Well what?”
“The .12 gauge? I still got to tell you every little thing?”
Wade, walking back to get the shotgun. felt tiny pricks of cold falling on his face. He cocked his eye skyward, seeing the most incredible thing: fine white snow crystals, glinting in the horizontal sunlight streaking through the low clouds. He leaned his head back and cackled, his mouth open, his eyes full of blue and falling snow.
By the time he returned, Frances already had a wreath of snow on her hat and shoulders. Wade knelt down, startling her.
“Jesus, you still here?”
Wade nodded. He felt better. Even good. The air, minty with sage and pine and cold, helped clear his head. He had an inkling this headache would pass mildly. He took a healthy swig of her wine, then another. Maybe he was finally outgrowing the headaches, maturing, becoming the young man in his reflection. Driving. Free to do what he wanted. Ready for anything.
He took another drink, aware despite his darkened vision that Frances was watching him.
“Look at you,” he heard her say, “another damn foundling. Is that all it ever is for me, raising other people’s kids? What a lotta shit life was. Goddammit anyways.”
Wade sat beside her. “Yeah I know,” he said.
She took her wine back and had another drink.
“Look down there, Wade. All I ever wanted. I raised everything—hay, livestock, children—and here I am, no more left of me than the little that’s in them barren fields. An what do I got? Not a damn thing of my own, no child, no crops, no livestock, not even a square foot of dirt.”
She laid the shotgun across her lap, quiet for a long time. It continued to sn
ow. They passed the bottle back and forth. It grew dark and turned even colder.
When Frances spoke again, it was without looking up.
“All right, Wade. Time you got the jeep back home.”
“But what about you?”
“Never mind me. Just go on.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Hunt,” she finally said. “I’m goin to hunt.”
“Hunt what?”
“Birds. Sage hens. Grouse. Come on now, an git. You’re scarin em away. All your blatherin.”
Wade stood uncertainly.
“When do I come get you then?”
“You don’t. And don’t say nothin to Joe. He’ll be up here claimin that all the game birds are his too. I’ll come back when I’m good and ready.”
Wade shrugged doubtfully and wobbled a few yards off. He knew she wasn’t about to let him stay. He felt flush with wine, so stuporously sad he wanted to cry, so drunk he didn’t care. He looked up at the range of mountains, glittering with snow that was much heavier at the higher elevations. He looked back at Frances. She sat sheltered against her rock, shotgun across her lap, dirty hat crunched back on her head. The powdery snow had coated her, blending her in with the rock.
It was a perfect camouflage.
He admired her for that.
THE AFTERNOON’S SUMMER snow high up Independence Basin fell in town as a quiet rain. The final rodeo events ran into early evening, by which point the makeshift arena was awash with mud and wet manure. The closing ceremony was held in premature darkness, with pickup headlights for floodlights. Undaunted by the rain, hooting spectators remained to the end as a stream of contestants in numbered pie tins slogged out to a central booth to receive their dubious awards. It was only when the last battery wore down that the rodeo marshals called a halt and everyone clogged the road back to town.
Waiting for the coming of the mob, Marly stood behind the bar, rubbing white polishing paste onto a silver pot. Joe Meeks came in. Silently took a stool.
“Well look who’s back. A little early though, ain’t you?”
“Early? How so?”
“Didn’t expect you to drop by again for another twenty years. Or so.”
Joe hooked his heels on the boot-rail. Other than Marly, the place was empty but for two cowboy hats in a booth in back. He spun a quarter on the waxy bar, staring into the flaking silver mirror behind the bar until Marly stepped between him and his image.
“Happy to get you somethin, though. What’ll you have?”