by Jim Harrison
The first shock wave spun Sylvia around and seemed to lift me off the grass. In the great cloud of mud and water I thought I caught a split-second picture of Tim hurtling through the air but I hoped it was the calf. But the sound hit us in an all-encompassing deafening roar and the trees’ limbs bent with it. I lay there as the mud and water covered us and I saw Sylvia's mouth was open as if she was screaming but the blast had stunned my ears.
We got up slowly, then ran down to the dam with Sylvia ahead of me. A great hole had been torn in the middle of the dam and the backwater had begun to rush through and gradually widen the opening. The calf lay against the far bank covered with mud. Not far away the cow was moving forward on its legs which were badly broken. She collapsed on her stomach but still edged toward the bank on her knees. I ran partway out on the dam but felt the earth trembling under my feet. I could hear now but the cow was bawling out horribly and the water sounded like a freight train. I turned and saw that Sylvia was standing on the rock steps beyond the first conduit below me. Tim was lying on his face nearly concealed by the mud.
I jumped down the bank and slipped twice getting to her. She was kneeling beside him and had him turned over with his head on her lap. She was still screaming. I knew immediately that he was dead. Blood was coming from his eyes and ears and nose and in quantity from his mouth, and one of his legs was tilted at a crazy angle. I touched the leg but quickly withdrew my hand when I saw it was nearly torn from his body. I saw that the hole was growing larger in the dam and we would have to get out of there to avoid drowning. I slipped off his dog tags which he still wore and looked for his billfold but remembered he had left it on the dashboard. I tried to drag Sylvia away but she wouldn't let go so I hit her hard along the temple and dragged her up the bank and onto the grass. I went back to Tim and tried to lift him but couldn't get a grip on his slippery clothes. The pistol had slipped down into his crotch and I emptied the chamber on the cow to stop her bawling. I propped Tim against a rock and wrapped my hand around his collar and started pulling but his shirt ripped. Then I grabbed him by the pigtail and made some progress but the water had risen to my knees and I could see that the whole dam was on the verge of giving way just as we had planned. I looked down into his open eyes and saw how the rain was washing his face clean and the blood from his mouth had slowed to a trickle. There couldn't be much of it left. Sylvia was sitting up now holding her face in her hands. She looked at me and I shook my head. Tim's body was trailing off in the current held only by my grip on his hair. I let go and barely made it to shore before the water reached my waist. I avoided being swept away by taking hold of some willow branches that dipped downward to the water. I took Sylvia's arm and moved her as quickly as I could to the car. It seemed to me that I knew Tim would die the moment he turned from the cattle and looked in amazement at the fuse that was no longer there. And then he had tried to run in those gaudy blue cowboy boots. Sylvia was moaning and I kept telling her to shut up but found that I was weeping myself and that my ears still rang from the explosion.
I fishtailed the car down the trail narrowly missing going into a ditch. We made it to the blacktop, through Orofino and out to Route 12 without noticing any police cars. I couldn't seem to drive fast and keep the car under control with the trailer swinging behind so I dumped it in a park near the Selway River outside of Lowell. Sylvia was slumped weeping in the seat with her hands over her face. I noticed for the first time that her skirt was soaked with blood. We would have to find a place to clean up. In the rearview mirror I caught a startling sight of my face with the tribal stripes still intact.
EPILOGUE
I SOMEHOW expected roadblocks by the time we reached the Montana border but nothing materialized. The rain had become a violent thunderstorm and I began to wonder if our handiwork would be discovered at all or perhaps was confused with a thunderclap. But I couldn't remember what I had done with the pistol which couldn't be traced further than Douglas, and the trailer had our fingerprints on it. And Tim's body might not be found for months. I felt sure I would eventually be caught but was unsure how they might go about it. This sort of spring deluge could knock out a dam I thought. Would the cow and calf be washed away? As we drove on in silence with the storm roaring about us my thoughts were drawn to the bluffs along the Yellowstone near Livingston. I could drive out on them, get out, slip the car in low gear and watch it disappear in the river. Or even better I could drive it to Chicago and either abandon it in a ghetto where it would surely be stolen or leave it at a parking lot at O'Hare and remove the license plates. I was frankly interested in saving my skin. Judges and ranchers in Idaho were not likely to look with mercy on sabotage and dead cattle or murdered watchdogs. Then there was the impossible problem of Sylvia who broke the silence with an occasional sob that made me jerk involuntarily at the wheel. We did not speak until the other side of Missoula. When we passed the hot springs near Lolo I had squeezed her arm but only got more weeping for my efforts.
“I'll put you on a plane in Bozeman.” No answer. My throat was constricted enough that it was hard to talk. “You go back home and I'll get in touch with you. If we get caught there's no point in you being involved.”
We drove another fifty miles before I got an answer. I put a tape in but pulled it right back out—the music sounded awful and implausibly tinny, almost blasphemous. I stopped on the banks of the Jefferson on the other side of Whitehall and washed up and changed my clothes. We needed gas and I didn't want to stop at a station caked and smeared with a combination of mud and lipstick and blood.
“What can I tell his parents?” Her voice was small and tight.
“Say that he drove to Alaska. Or was going to Africa. Or Mexico. Something like that.” Tim's death became more present and immediate. When I got back in the car after cleaning up I saw the blood on her skirt again, a nearly black stain that covered her lap. Alaska. If there weren't so many dams he would float down the Clearwater to the Snake to the Columbia and out into the Pacific. But a snag from a log would catch him or he would sink then float after a few days in the backwater of one of those huge dams that dot all the major watercourses of the West. They have fish ladders for steelhead. I have seen the strong ones make their laborious way up a three-hundred-foot incline. All to spawn where they themselves were born.
It was nearly midnight when we stopped at a motel near Boseman. Before she went into the bathroom I gave Sylvia three ten-milligram Valiums to dull her misery a bit. I walked to a bar down the road in the lessening rain and had a half dozen doubles as quickly as I could drink them. When I got back she was in bed with her face turned to the wall. I called the airport and made reservations for her to Atlanta with connections through Chicago for ten the next morning.
It would be a long night. I added some Valium to the whiskey swilling in my stomach. She sat up in bed and called to me and I sat down beside her and took her hand. Then I lay there fully clothed waiting for the drug and exhaustion to put her asleep. Every time I closed my own eyes I would see either the bawling cow or Tim cleaning his knife or his body floating away from me in the current. I imagined she was seeing much the same thing and I wanted to take her in my arms but thought it would be misunderstood. But then she collapsed against me and I hugged her while she wept. I stared at the ceiling watching the lights of the passing cars and trucks flicker across the ceiling and the far wall. I thought of trying to say something to comfort her but my brain had become wordless. Who would miss Tim besides Sylvia? And perhaps myself. For a moment I thought of blowing up more dams to honor him but doubted I could carry it off. I knew that in a very direct way I was responsible but felt nothing. I wanted him back. And what would Sylvia do now? It seemed unlikely that I would see her again after I put her on the plane. Maybe I should go home a few days and say hello in case I did get caught and sent to prison for a few years. But that seemed unlikely too. An act that I had conceived of as heroic would probably go unnoticed except by a rancher who might wonder why his dam had never washed a
way before, or why his Doberman was dead, or why he was missing two of his cattle. Two dead and two missing. My shoulder was wet with Sylvia's tears by the time she slept. My mind circled itself into a black, sleepless knot but I felt oddly alive. Suicide wasn't the question. For an hour or so I lapsed into fantasies of fishing. I caught an endless succession of tarpon until my arms were tired but Sylvia had pressed against my left arm until it slept. The first light eased through the window. I looked down at her bare breasts and then closely at her sleeping face. I kissed her lips very lightly and she stirred but slept on. Someone should take care of her but if I had any qualities of kindness and mercy left, any perceptions of what I was on earth however dim and stupid, I knew it couldn't be me.