by Homer Hickam
“Can we help you dig?” Brian asked after I told them we were working on a different site.
“Why would you want to do that?” Ray asked. “I thought you just wanted to count cow pies and cause us trouble.”
The brothers looked at each other, then shrugged. “We think we’d rather be paleontologists than environmentalists,” Philip said.
“Yeah. It’s more fun,” Brian added.
“Besides, we got fired by Green Planet,” Philip went on. “They said we weren’t sufficiently motivated.”
I gave it some thought, then said, “Follow me.” The worst that could happen, I figured, was Pick would send them back. They didn’t look particularly strong but I guessed digging could fix that.
We headed to the Square C. By then, the day was over and we spent the night at home, the brothers sleeping in the living room on the floor. Somebody knocked on my door after I’d gone to bed and I got up, pulled on a terry cloth robe, and found Jeanette standing outside. I opened the screen door for her.
She looked around and then had a seat in my easy chair. I sat down on the only other chair which was a folding picnic chair. Jeanette opened with, “Mike, I can’t believe how much you spent today.”
I knew where this was going and also knew there was no use arguing about it. “Ray and I did the best we could,” I said.
“That may well be,” she said, “but I was still shocked.”
“Some of the stuff we can sell after we’re done with it like the jackhammers, compressors, and water tank,” I pointed out. “Anyway, I guess you have to spend money to make money.”
Jeanette received my homily with something less than enthusiasm. “That’s bullshit,” she said, but added, “I know where you’re coming from. I hope you didn’t offer to pay those brothers.”
“No, but if Pick thinks he needs them, I guess we’ll have to feed them,” I said, adding, “we’ll go into Jericho tomorrow to get the food.”
“No, I’ll do that. You and Ray need to get that equipment out to Blackie Butte. Use Bob and my John Deere. Be careful with both, you hear?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“But you don’t need to keep Bob out there. Bring him back, you and Ray, and take the four-wheelers.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Jeanette had her hands on her knees and her fingers were tapping a tune on them. “Wonder what Bill would think about all this?”
“He would have never let Pick cross your land,” I pointed out. “So he wouldn’t have had to deal with it.”
Her tapping stopped. “You’re right, Mike. Bill would have kicked Pick off the ranch so fast his head would’ve spun right off his neck. I’ve really opened us up to something, haven’t I?”
“Yes you have,” I answered. “But I don’t guess there’s any reason to beat yourself up over it.”
She didn’t take my comment well. “You should have spoke up, Mike. Instead, you acted like a little school boy with all his talk about dinosaurs. I could have used better advice.”
“I don’t recall you asking my advice.”
“Well, that’s a given.”
I started to defend myself, but my better angels said to let it go. “I’ll try to do better.”
This made her smile, which, of course, I was glad to see. “I swear, Mike, you tell me to go piss down my leg with fewer words than any man I’ve ever known.” She got up. “Well, you need your sleep and so do I.”
“Sure you won’t stay for a drink?” I boldly asked. “I was so tired when I got back, I forgot to have one.”
She hesitated, looked me in the eye, then said, “It’s best to keep my head clear around you, I think.”
I wondered what the hell that meant but before I could ask, the screen door was slapping behind her and she was gone into the night. I sat there for a little while, then went back to bed, there to dream not of Jeanette but of Blackie Butte. I saw Pick, Laura, and Tanya climbing up and down it, carrying big bones in their arms. They were giving them to somebody but I couldn’t see who it was. I also heard the low, guttural engine noises that had interrupted my sleep out there. That woke me up and I listened carefully but heard nothing but the hum of my window air conditioner, which soon lulled me back to sleep. I had no more dreams, at least none that I recall.
16
Ray and I were greeted with enthusiasm by Pick, his ladies, and Amelia as we rolled into camp early the next morning. Laura and Tanya, especially, were like kids on Christmas morning going through all the equipment we’d brought from Miles City and Billings. “These are great jackhammers!” Laura cried, practically swooning at the sight of the heavy, dirty things. “And look at these compressors. Woo-hoo!”
How many women in the world get excited about heavy construction equipment? If they only knew, it is nearly a direct path to a man’s heart.
Tanya loved the water tank. “Where did you find this, Mike?” she bubbled. “I have never seen such a lovely tank before!”
“Got something else for you, too, darling,” I said in my most manly tone. “Got your name on it. Look in the back of Bob. That would be the truck.”
She looked, saw the cardboard box with her name on it, climbed in, opened it, and yelped in almost orgasmic ecstasy. “Vodka! Oh, Grey Goose! A dozen bottles!”
“There’s tonic in that other box,” I said, hoping to hear another orgasmic cry.
Instead, Tanya jumped down from Bob and gave me a big hug and a kiss on the lips. My knees went a bit wobbly. Before I could respond, Laura came running over. “Tanya, they bought brand new chisels! Hardened steel! Come see!” and together these two dream gals went scampering off to look at tools.
Ray swung by. “I saw you got a kiss,” he said, a bit sour.
“How about you?”
“Amelia said she’d been thinking and had decided she was too young to get engaged. What does that mean? I never asked her to get married! I just wanted to, you know, make out and stuff.”
“How does she feel about that? Making out and stuff, that is.”
“Who knows?” he replied. “Best I ever got was a little kiss.”
“Well, Ray, I guess a little kiss is sometimes all you need.”
“Boy, it’s been a long time since you were a teenager,” Ray pointed out and went on his way.
Pick came over. “Mike, how long do you think it will take to hook up those jackhammers?”
I looked over to where Laura, Tanya, and the two former Green Planet brothers were already hooking the jackhammers up to the compressors. “About as long as it takes to carry them up to the top of the hill,” I said. “I take it you’ve agreed to take on Brian and Philip.”
“Sure,” he said. “Willing backs who work for nothing but food? Every paleontologist’s dream.”
The chatter of a compressor began and Laura attacked a boulder at the bottom of the butte with the thirty-pound jackhammer. She knew what she was doing and, within a minute, the sandstone rock gave it up and fell apart. Laura handed the jackhammer over to Tanya and raised her hands in victory. Pick looked at the spectacle and smiled. Tanya assaulted another boulder.
After everyone took a turn on the jackhammer to get the feel of it—everyone but Pick who suddenly had a need to work on his journal—Laura called for a break and detailed her plan to move the equipment where it needed to go and how we were going to take down the butte. When she finished, I had to point something out. “It’s July one,” I said. “The Independence Day celebration in Jericho is a big deal. Ray and I are on tap to do some work on it and Jeanette’s one of the prime organizers. I suggest we go in on the evening of the third and enjoy the day. Jeanette always has a few rooms reserved in Tellman’s Motel for the occasion.”
Laura gave that some thought. “A break would be good,” she said. “And I look forward to a shower.”
“I do as well,” Tanya said, giving me a suggestive glance. My heart sped up.
“OK. We’ll go in on the evening of the third to enjoy the fourth,” Laura said.
“But the next couple of days, I want to see some work done.”
This was received with good cheer. We were all serious dinosaur diggers, after all. While Ray and I took Bob and the tractor back to the ranch and returned on our four-wheelers, Laura directed the move of equipment. Then, she realized she’d forgotten something. The BLM fence, which ran along the bottom of Blackie’s north side rose like a thin net to catch all the debris we were about to send down on top of it. “We should move that fence, Mike,” she told me.
I considered it, then agreed but explained it would mean another delay because to move it meant lengthening it and we didn’t have either extra wire or posts.
“Then just take it down,” Laura said. “We can put it back later.”
Since none of our cows were out this way, I agreed and went after Ray and Amelia who knew what to do. Within an hour, we had the fence down and it wasn’t more than a minute later that Laura had the rocks tumbling off the butte.
The rest of the day was spent with the hot and dusty task of taking down what was essentially a mountain. Even Pick climbed up and helped pry loose a couple of huge slabs of sandstone, which, when they broke loose, slid and rolled with ponderous majesty down the back side, crashing at the bottom with a jolt that I could feel even standing on top. That night, the v&t was needed just to dull the ache in my bones and I didn’t last long around the new fire pit. I crept to my tent and was out cold almost instantly.
Sometime in the night, I woke, hearing the same low engine noises I’d heard at the Trike site. It didn’t sound nearby so I let it go. The next morning, Tanya came to me while I was eating my breakfast of cold milk and cereal. “Mike, I think I heard those sounds you keep talking about. What could be making them?”
“I have no idea,” I confessed.
“I think it came from the direction of the lake.”
“Yep. That’s what it sounded like to me, too.”
“Will we be near the lake on the fourth of July?”
“There’s a dance at the marina that night. Fireworks, too.”
She smiled. “I would enjoy a dance.”
My heart did its little flutter. “Then I’ll see you there.”
The day boiled on and Blackie got a little shorter. Jeanette showed up driving Bob, which was filled with groceries. She watched the activity for a while, then called me down to talk. “I hate what you’re doing to my butte,” she said.
“It’s just dirt, Jeanette. And we don’t come out here that much to look at it. Nobody does. Not even that many cows.”
She sighed. “You know what I mean, Mike. You, of all people, know.”
“It’s too late to change it now,” I said. “Let’s just go with it.”
She nodded but actually bit her lip, the first time I’d ever seen her do that. I knew what she was thinking. Bill Coulter would have never allowed a major landmark on the Square C to be destroyed.
Pick came over and he and Jeanette walked off together. I climbed back up on the butte and took my turn on the jackhammers. When I looked back, I saw Pick helping Jeanette carry the groceries from Bob into the cook tent. When they were finished, Jeanette climbed up to our ersatz quarry, got a shovel, and started using it with gritty determination. The young people—meaning Ray, Amelia, and the Marsh brothers—stopped briefly and just watched her go. Blackie Butte, now that Jeanette Coulter was there with her mind made up to take off its top, stood no chance.
Then Ted Brescoe showed up in his official white BLM pickup. “What the hell are you doing?” he screamed as soon as he climbed out. “Stop this. Stop this now!”
From the passenger seat stepped Edith, out here for no apparent reason. I surely couldn’t believe it was because she liked being with her husband.
“Stop nothing,” Jeanette said to the others and climbed down to confront Ted. I followed just in case I got orders from the queen of the prairie to beat up the representative of the Big Lousy Monster.
Ted was in a state that bordered nearly on out of control. He was stomping around, screaming obscenities. When he saw the fence was down, I thought he was going to blow an artery. He rushed over to Jeanette and shook his finger in her face. “You will be fined! You will be fined!” he screamed.
“You shut up, Ted Brescoe,” Jeanette replied. “This is my land and my lease. The Coulters have taken good care of this property for a hundred years. What we are doing here is my business and not yours. You calm down or I’ll have Mike run you off. Hell, I’ll do it myself.”
Ted’s finger folded and he brought it down but he was still clearly enraged, his eyes bugged, his jaw clenched, the sinews in his neck standing out. “That lease may not be yours much longer,” he threatened. “And I’ll tell you something else. I’m going to get a surveyor out here to check the BLM line. I’ve always suspected all of Blackie Butte is on federal land.”
“Only you, Ted, would say something so stupid,” Jeanette retorted.
“We’ll see,” he seethed.
“Ted,” Edith said, “why are you so worked up? It’s just an old hill. There’s ten thousand of them out here.”
Ted turned on her. “Shut up, Edith. I gave these idiots a permit to look for bones, not dig them up. And they sure didn’t have permission to knock down that fence. Anyway, this has nothing to do with local politics. This is a federal matter.”
I took this as an interesting comment, primarily because it was from a husband to a wife but it sounded like a dustup between two bureaucrats, one a lowly local, the other a lordly federalista.
Edith retorted in kind. “It is my responsibility to see my constituents represented.”
“Jeanette doesn’t live in Jericho,” Ted pointed out. “This falls under my purview.”
At least, their little turf struggle had calmed Ted down. “Ted, why don’t you do a bullet chart and present it to us at our next meeting?” I asked.
Ted glanced at me, his expression filled with contempt. I guess he didn’t like my idea. He turned back to Jeanette. “Until the BLM completes its survey, I am hereby ordering you to cease and desist. If you don’t, I will find a federal judge to issue a ruling to make you stop. And I’m not kidding about that fine. You destroyed federal property when you knocked down my fence.”
“I’ll build you a better fence, Ted,” Jeanette said. “There’s no reason for any of this.”
Ted drew himself up. “I have a duty here to oversee anything that occurs on the BLM and, by God, that’s what I’m going to do. Cease and desist, Jeanette, cease and desist.”
“Ted?”
“What?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
It was rare when Jeanette used the F-word, but I guess Ted Brescoe was able to bring out the worst in anybody.
“We’ll see about that,” Ted said, and stomped to his truck.
“I’ll talk to him, Jeanette,” Edith said, giving me a cool glance. I just shrugged. She rolled her eyes and followed her dear husband.
Laura, Tanya, and Pick had gathered nearby to hear all this. Jeanette turned to them. “It’s all right. Everything is all right. Go back to work.”
We went back to work but when we took breaks, most of the talk was about the BLM agent. The consensus was he was an idiot, which, of course he was, but he was also a powerful one, at least on federal property. I hoped Edith would talk some sense in him. I also hoped he wasn’t right about the boundary lines of the BLM.
17
We kept taking off the top of the butte and, to my surprise, Jeanette stayed out to help. She said she’d asked Buddy Thomason to look after the Square C for a few days and she was ready for a little vacation. She chose to be quite sociable, joining us for our drinks, telling a few funny stories about ranch life and, more seriously, how she’d met Bill Coulter, twenty years older than she, and how they’d taken the Square C from a struggling, backward little ranch into the twenty-first century of animal husbandry. Of course, it was still struggling, she said, but at least she was working with the very latest information
provided her by Montana State University and other institutions of higher learning in the state.
“Some day,” she said, wistfully, “we’ll start turning a consistent profit and we’ll prove to the other ranchers they also need to upgrade their methods.”
“It sounds like you nurture the land, Mrs. Coulter,” Brian said.
“I do my best,” Jeanette replied. “All ranchers in Fillmore County do the same.”
“I have to say I have some reservations about tearing this hill down,” Philip said.
“I do as well,” Jeanette responded, “but I’ve been assured the scientific value is the greater interest here.”
I have to say I had never heard Jeanette be so pedantic. I, for one, was impressed and so, apparently, were the brothers who just leaned back with their v&t’s. When she wanted to, Jeanette could charm anyone. Anyway, I think those greenies wanted to get charmed, else they might have asked her about the greater interest called the profit motive. Actually, I think they were enjoying knocking down Blackie Butte and it was fun, make no mistake about that. It made me think of my trip to Delphi in Greece with the second wife. Delphi is a mountain of ancient Greek monuments that are somewhat battered. What had battered them? Our guide said after the classical period, probably goatherds on top of the mountain with nothing better to do than to roll rocks and chunks of monuments down the hill just to see what they’d do. In short, it was fun to make stuff roll down hills and the Marsh brothers were having the time of their lives.