by Edward Abbey
“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!
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, Smi
th 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.
15
Rest and Relaxation
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.”