by Edward Abbey
“Where’s Reuben?”
“At the Finleys’. They’re bringing him home at six.”
He took a deep draft of his martini. “Then we’ve just got time for a quickie.”
She snuggled close and licked his ear. “You and who else, old man? You for a quickie? Takes you five minutes to remember where you put it.”
The boy came storming in as scheduled, filling half the house with his noisy joy. Doc had barely time to redo his suspender clips before Reuben climbed a chair and hurled himself into the old man’s arms: “Daddy!”
That’s me, he thought, I guess. If not me who? Whom? And does it matter? It does not. He hugged the squirming animal in his arms, kissed him and set him down, on demand. Reuben was three years old, a bit short for his age (like his mother), but quick and vivid and supple as a squirrel. Also like his mother. He had her dark wavy copper-tinted hair, her large grayblue eyes, the rosy cheeks. So where are the Sarvis genes? he thought again. Where else but in the nose, that proud prominent proboscis like an eagle’s beak that leads the soul of man to ever higher braver nobler adventures. My boy. A bit of the old Semitic curve to the nostril, of course, that’s her touch again. Gives the lad the look of a young Arabian prince. About to mount his horse.
The Assyrians came down like a wolf on the fold,
Their cohorts all gleaming in purple and gold, eh?
Yes.
Bonnie came down from the master bedroom, dressed in red and green and gold, gold blouse, green slacks, a red sash around her still slender waist. In Doc’s eyes, in any man’s eyes, she was a vision of delight. The years and a little too much desert sun had added wrinkles around her eyes, bleached out somewhat the rich deep mahogany of her hair, perhaps toughened the skin at the base of the throat. How many times had he urged her to wear a scarf around her neck? Reminding her of the holes in the ozone, the greenhouse effect, the dangers of skin cancer? To what avail? She was beautiful. She did as she pleased.
Young Reuben met her halfway on the stairs, shouting again. She squatted to embrace him, picked him up wriggling like a cat, carried him down and into the kitchen, where Doc set the rugged pine table with plates and flatware, wineglass and beermug and an unbreakable synthetic cup for the child, filled with milk. Milk of cow. Bonnie’s breasts looked bountiful as ever but she had weaned the boy over a year before; the liebfraumilch secreted there she was saving for the next. The next? Why yes, Bonnie Abbzug was pregnant again. First trimester. For the second, final and forever last time, she swore. But no doubt about it, Bonnie had been stuffed. One on the floor, one in the oven.
Her personal pollinator, el viejo verde, her green old man, Alexander K. Sarvis, M.D., F.A.C.S., Professor of Pediatrics at the College of Medicine of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, poured himself a Bud and sat down at the table. “Hungry,” he said, “let’s eat. Feel like somebody took me for a run around the block in double time.”
“You wanted a quickie,” she said, “you got the best in town.”
“A succubus from Heaven,” he agreed. “I have a notion, though, the whole thing was planned. Whenever I see you wearing that apron I know I’m in for trouble and hard work.”
“Hard work!” She laughed. “I did the work.”
“But I’m the one that’s tired.”
“Mutter,” said the boy, “what is Daddy talking about?”
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, do you, Daddy?”
“That’s right and I don’t care and if you really want to find out, old Reube my shrimp, I’ll read you a book. When you’re ready for bed, that is.”
“What book?”
“Well, how about Rapunzel? Snow White? Cinderella?”
“No mushy stuff,” the boy said. “I want action.”
Doc grinned at Bonnie as she set the casserole of baked chicken on the table. “See what I mean? Little boys really are different from little girls.”
“Cultural conditioning, cultural conditioning.”
“And the bigger they get the bigger the difference.”
“It’s all a matter of cultural conditioning.”
“At the age of three?”
“At any age.”
Doc smiled, tying a bib around Reuben’s neck. They’d been going around and around on this topic for years. A circular argument. Finite but boundless. Like many other differences of opinion between — or among — the various American sexes. Us white men, he thought, sole source of all evil, and them, the others, those many and various Official Minorities. Which included, of course, the female sex. Only in America could women demand to be considered an official minority group with all the special privileges pertaining thereunto. Smiling, he carved his potato, cut Reuben’s chicken into safe bite-size pieces.
“What are you smirking about now?”
“Who, me?”
“Yeah, you.”
Reuben pulled the bib free over his head and tossed it casually to the floor. He attacked his meat with a fierce fork.
Replying to his wife off the topside of his mind, the good doctor thought, below, on a more serious, masculine level, Yes it’s true, true, takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss.
“Oink,” she said, “oink oink.”
But at least we’re not arguing with George. Anything’s better than trying to reason with George Washington Hayduke.
“You’re not really answering my question, wise guy.”
Answering her question with another flip evasion, he thought, What would George do if he heard about Radium Canyon? About Lost Eden Canyon?
“What’s Daddy talking about, Mutter?”
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, darling. Does he, Daddy?”
“Gender, sweetheart, gender. How to render the gender … tender.” What would he do if he heard about GOLIATH?
In bed. The silent tube confronted them, bland blond Mormon faces blathering about the weather, basketball, the rising Salt Lake, something or other, whatever. With the volume turned to zero Doc and Bonnie looked at the perfectly hairdressed heads perched like puppets behind a curvilinear plastic barrier or desk or counter of some kind, chipper smiles and empty eyes facing the red eye of the camera. TV, like a child, should be seen not heard.
Doc held the remote-control device in his hand. The one good invention of the television age. “Why am I so tired?” he complained. “Turn it off?”
“You take your patients too seriously.”
“They’re dying. Most of them. Or else there’s nothing wrong with them at all, only their mothers with too much money and too little to do. Anyhow I’m tired. Maybe I’m getting old.”
“You old but you not dead.” She patted her belly. “Feel it.”
He felt it, his big smooth clever hand spread half across the slight but discernible bulge. “What shall we call this one?”
“Deborah.”
“Suppose it’s a boy?”
“It’s a girl. We’ll call her Deborah. After my Aunt Sally.”
“Your Aunt Sally’s name is Sally.”
“Her mother was Deborah.”
“I see. But I’ll bet it’s a boy. Another Reuben.”
“What’s wrong with Reuben?”
“Good name for a sandwich.”
“What’s wrong with Reuben?”
“Nothing’s wrong with Reuben. Who said there’s anything wrong with Reuben? He’s a little short, that’s all.”
“He’s your son.”
“My short son. What makes you so sure this next one’s a girl?”
“Not the next one. The last one. Because I know she’s a girl.”
“But how do you know?”
“I just know.” She stared at the TV. The cheerful heads had disappeared for a moment, succeeded by a confused picture of young men and women trying to climb a barbed-wire fence. Demonstrators. As in demonic? Troublemakers. “Just know,” she murmured.
“Intuition,” he said. He knew better than to pursue this line of inquiry. But he could n
ot restrain himself. “Your intuition tells you.”
“Of course.”
“Your dream analysis.”
“That also. Of course.”
“Your magic crystals.”
Some tall sexbomb with long black wild hair was waving a flag at the TV cameras. She wore cut-off Levis, shamefully short, and a snug white T-shirt. Both T-shirt and flag bore the same mysterious device: a green fist in a red circle on a field of white. Latin colors.
“Crystals?” she said, with irritation. “I threw those silly things away a year ago. Look at that slut. What’s she doing?”
“Good firm legs,” he said. “Well-developed mammaries. Genetically sound facial structure. A healthy specimen of the breed, in reproductive prime. You never told me.”
“Never told you what? Look at her. Look at them. What are they doing?”
“Never told me about throwing away your crystals. Shall I turn it off?”
“Wait,” said Bonnie.
The picture changed. Two men were arguing at a microphone, a crowd of people seated, some standing, beyond them. Some of the faces in the background, out of focus, appeared to be distorted by anger. Contempt? Derision? Both men looked familiar. Distantly familiar, like intimations of a remote preincarnation.
“Doc,” she said. “Look. It’s Seldom. Isn’t it?”
Doc gaped at the murky screen. The camera was being joggled or jostled by unprofessional hands. But he saw, he thought he could see, the angular bony face, the brown skin with pale forehead (where the hatline lay), the tousled tangled straw-colored hair, the basically unsheveled dress — crooked necktie, too-large collar, wrinkled and rumpled jacket — of that one and only same old Smith. That Seldom Seen Smith. Old Seldom Hisself. Always talking, always getting into arguments with somebody.
“And look,” Bonnie cried, voice rising with excitement, “that other man. The big fat one in the rancher hat. The one chewing on that rock. Laughing. Don’t we know him? Isn’t that —?”
Doctor Sarvis pressed the Off button. The picture collapsed upon itself, sucked into the black hole of electronic innerspace. Extinguished once now and forever. No, he thought, we don’t know them. “Tired,” he muttered, “very tired …”
“Doc!” She snatched the black-button gadget from his hand, switched the picture on again. Slowly, with some reluctance among the dancing whirling unitarily unpredictable quanta of subatomic particles — subnuclear waves? — transcendental subhypothetical wavicles? — a picture coalesced, reassembled itself, assumed color and form and a trivial semblance of human animation.
Four. The four smug smart heads sat there again, grinning through their well-groomed teeth, hairdos constructed in the precise vicious perfection of wigs in a wig shop, shuffling papers with their sanitary hands, their crisp clean polished pure fingernails.
Bonnie cut the picture. Silence. Darkness.
“Doc,” she said, “that was Seldom. It was.”
“Who?”
“You heard me. Seldom Seen. He’s up to something.”
“Never heard tell of Seldom Seen. Go to sleep, my love.”
She fell quiet for a minute, trying. She stirred. “I can’t,” she said.
“Can’t what?”
“Can’t sleep.”
“Sure you can, honey.” He stroked her shoulder, caressed her plump little belly. Feigning an enormous yawn. “Tired, tired,” he murmured, “oh so tired. …”
Bonnie lay silent, staring at the dim ceiling. For two minutes. “Doc …?”
A gentle snoring at her side.
“Doc — you asleep?”
He twitched. Turned. Sighed. “Hey …? Huh …?”
“You think Reuben is all right?”
“Who?”
“Reuben.”
“You were talking about Seldom.”
“Well now I’m talking about Reuben. Do you think he’s all right?”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“That’s not what I asked you. There’s nothing wrong with him. I said, Do you think he’s all right?”
Doc pondered the question. Linear thinking, he thought. Must get over this linear thinking. Learn to get my right brain into gear. Or is it the left? Get my crystals organized. Tap the old spinal intuition, pump out some extrasensory perception.
“Well …?”
“I think he’s fine,” he said. “A little small, maybe, for his age-group, but otherwise just fine. Active, bright, in perfect health.” There was a pause. Peace, he thought. “Who is?”
“What?” Please. Let us have peace. “That’s what I’m asking you, for godsake. Who?”
“I thought we were talking about Reuben. Didn’t you ask me about Reuben, for the love of Christ?”
“What if I did? It’s Seldom I’m wondering about. And don’t swear at me in bed.”
“Sorry.” He rolled to his side, striving for sleep. “Tired,” he muttered.
“What do you suppose is going on?” she said. “You think Seldom’s in trouble?”
“He’s fine. A little short, sure, but …”
“What would George do if he were here?” “George?” Alarm bells jangled in his heart. “George, I said, who else? What would he do?” “George is gone,” he said. And thank God for that. The very thought of Hayduke loosened something fundamental in his bowels. “I know. But suppose he’s not. Suppose he came back.” “He’s gone. You’ll never see him again. He’s gone.” “But just suppose …?”
“Suppose we go to sleep, sweetheart.” He closed his eyes tightly, hoping to shut out inner vision. Difficult. “I love you, honey,” he mumbled, faking sleep. “Love you too …”
Eyes shut, stiff as a stone, Doc lay wide awake. Doc was terrified. Yes, it was time for their long-postponed postnuptial honeymoon trip to — Italy? The isles of Greece? Provence? Majorca? Liverpool, Hamburg, Volgagrad, anywhere!
3
The Hearing
The hearing room was jammed. Packed. Packed and jampacked with the Bishop’s courtiers, his employees, his menial minions and their families and their relations. All Mormons. And every decent Mormon couple is expected to breed at least twelve children. An unwritten rule of the Church, the one true church here below in the Land of Deseret.
At the long table on the dais, facing the crowd, sat the Suits. That is, the important men in the dark sober business suits who always preside over these affairs: the commissioners of Landfill County; the representatives of the BLM (Bureau of Livestock and Mining), of the NPS (National Parking-lot Service), of the USFS (United States Forest Swine), of the DOE (Department of Entropy), and of the State DG&F (Department of Game & Fishiness); and the spokesmen for private industry, in this case two Denver-based gentlemen presenting the views of Nuclear Syn-Fuels Ltd., a multinational combine with its general headquarters in Brussels and its hindquarters spread all over the globe.
Our globe.
The Suits had long before finished their presentations. Glancing at wristwatches — one of the Denver men wore six of them, three per wrist, each set to a different time zone — and then at the TV cameras, trapped by the high-intensity klieg lights, the sometimes unavoidable public exposure, they waited, bald heads gleaming, for termination of the unsolicited testimony from the common citizens. These, the uninvited and unwanted, would be cut off sharp at 5 P.M., finished or not. Together with the mediums from the media, those minor irritants.
There was also J. Dudley Love, commissioner from a neighboring county, a Bishop in the Church, owner of the state’s largest fleet of ore haulers, part-time cattle rancher, night-time pot robber from ancient Indian tombs, important mine-owner and mining-claims speculator with holdings throughout the Four Corners region (Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona), motel owner, restaurant owner, charter airline owner, member of the BLM Advisory Board and of the DOE’s Advisory Board, aspirant to the U.S. Congress, to the Governor’s mansion, to the U.S. Senate, to the Divine Kingdom, father of eleven children (only eleven — a sore point), and former poor
boy who got his start as a mucker in Charlie Steen’s Mi Vida uranium mine. The big one. Love was also a heavy investor in GOLIATH, the first Giant Earth Mover and walking dragline machine ever to be welded, bolted and slapped together in the Inter-Mountain West. He took great pride in each of these achievements but most pride, perhaps, in his bold and rejuvenated heart. There had been a time, yes, only a few years ago, when, under the influence of a quack heart surgeon and his brazen Jewish big-breasted sexpot of a concubine, Love’s heart had softened, nearly failed, began to bleed for things like juniper trees and kit foxes and purple asters and desert turtles. A bad weak shameful period — menstrual, climacteric, you might say — in his life. But with help from the Church, from his fellow Rotarians, from his boys on the Search & Rescue Team, from prayer and God and Jesus, he had gotten over that malaise, had reformed, been reborn again with tough and vulcanized heart to become, once again, the biggest man in the whole damned goddamned canyon country. The new Love. The real Love. The ultimate Love.
This particular Love was scheduled to testify at 4:45. His would be the last voice and the final face that the sound recorders, Nikons, microphones and the TV cameras would bear away, on videotape, for the viewing public. Such had been his private request to the hearing officer (J. Marvin Pratt, fellow commissioner) and it had been granted as a matter of course.
Meanwhile an hour of tedium remained. One by one members of the audience arose, as names were called from a list, and shuffled shyly forward to say their few and humble words. Dentists, lawyers, mine operators, a local newspaper publisher, cattle ranchers, the county sheriff, truckstop owners, storekeepers, construction contractors, school administrators, highway officials, officials of the state and county Chambers of Commerce, a Congressman, two state legislators — the dignitaries, as customary, had all been heard from first, in order of rank. Now, in the final hour, came a few actual miners, a few actual truckdrivers, even a dude wrangler and one registered nurse, to speak their piece. Each was allotted two minutes. All but two echoed the words and endorsed the wisdom of their betters. Yes, they agreed, these here new uranium mines will create jobs. The new mill means more jobs. Yes, we need industry here so our kids don’t have to go to California or Salt Lake City (one near as wicked and Godless a place as the other) to find work. Yes, we need the tax base. Yes, we want to grow. Grow? Yes, GROW! Like that there big machine they got, that GOLIATH, we want GROWTH in our county too. We been neglected too long. Let them wilderness lovers go somewheres else, they got the whole Grand Canyon to get lost in and it serves them right.