Durango

by Gary Hart

  Mayor, he said when they met, I have an idea I’d like for you to consider. He then outlined his plan to have the mayor and the son of his old friend Congressman Carroll approach Dan Sheridan and ask him to employ the powerful instrument of his goodwill with the Southern Utes to resolve the Animas–La Plata water project and restore peace to southwestern Colorado.

  The aging politician was stunned. Professor, there’s nothing I’d rather do than get this water controversy behind us. Lord knows, it’s been a cross I’ve carried almost my whole adult life. And believe me, I’m as concerned as anyone around here about the uproar going on in this town and this county. I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never seen anything like it.

  He shook his head and continued. But you and I both know that Mr. Sheridan and I have had our differences all these years. And I don’t think there’s a chance in the world he’s going to let me darken his doorstep, let alone persuade him to get back into this battle.

  Smithson said, Do you accept the fact that the Southern Utes are the key to this maze?

  Of course they are, Hurley said. If you’ve thought about this as much as I have, you can’t come to any other conclusion.

  Smithson said, Do you dispute the fact that Dan Sheridan has a particular, even unique, relationship with Leonard Cloud and the tribe?

  Hurley thought awhile and then said, No, as a matter of fact I don’t dispute that. I hadn’t thought about it, but now that I do I believe you are exactly right. But having accepted all that doesn’t lead me to believe that I’m the one who’s going to convince him to rejoin the fight. ’Specially after all that history.

  How bad do you want to resolve this dispute, Mayor? Smithson asked.

  It’d be the best thing I ever did for this community, the old man said. Of course I want it more than anything else. Pat Carroll Senior and I put our whole life into it. Now he’s not around to get it finished.

  But his son is, the professor said, and you are. And between the two of you I think you can bring Mr. Sheridan back and get him to convince the Indians to accept a position that will end this war.

  Mayor Hurley silently considered this at length. You know what you’re asking me to do, don’t you? he presently said. You’re asking me to go hat in hand to Mr. Sheridan and apologize for what I did back then. After a moment, he said, I’m not sure I can do that.

  How do you feel about all that business now? Smithson asked.

  I feel pretty bad about it. In fact, I feel goddamn bad about it. He didn’t understand what I was trying to do, and everybody else thought I had come down on him and driven him out. I just thought he would be a distraction at a critical time to the project and would confuse things even further.

  And…, the professor asked.

  And…I screwed up. I was wrong. I’ve always been kinda tone deaf where human feelings are concerned. Just ask the late Mrs. Hurley…if you could. She would have been the first to tell you. No, I played into the hands of the yahoos and sent a good man—a very good man—off into the wilderness, almost literally. I’m damned ashamed of it.

  Well, Professor Smithson said, I think it’s come time to go back where we started and fix things up.

  21.

  Tribal chairman Leonard Cloud and two of his trusted tribal council members routinely toured the area up and down the Animas River as it transited the reservation on its way south to New Mexico. Occasionally, they would do the same thing with the Florida and other streams, many dry as dust by the end of summer, after the spring melts and runoffs from the high country. It was a ritual that was born of practicality, checking stream flows and considering how augmented river capacity might be used to fulfill their plans for their people. But it was also a means of connecting and reconnecting with the lifeblood of maternal earth from whom all other natural blessings flowed.

  Long before the early immigrant Americans, and even earlier than the Spanish before them, these roaming people of the West had a spiritual connection to water. Of necessity, their encampments were always on or near rivers and streams or the occasional natural pond backed up behind a beaver dam. What had been a matter of practicality for more generations than any Ute could remember had naturally become a matter of religious conviction. Without water there was no life. Water was a gift. Water was life. Water and existence could not be separated. Water itself had a spirit.

  When the immigrants came west and settled and built their sod houses, then their outposts, then their villages, then their towns, they depended on water just as much for their livelihood. But they treated it as a commodity, something to be acquired, a subject of capture, then of ownership, trading, and manipulation. They fought over it and more than a few times killed each other over it. This behavior gave rise to the saying known to all ranchers in the West: “Whiskey is for drinkin’; water is for fightin’.”

  The indigenous people were amazed by this. In the days before the immigrants, no tribe sought to own the water. It was a gift from the Spirit to all humankind. Tribes might fight over herds of buffalo or grazing space or dominion of one kind or another. But rarely over water. Before the machines and the cities came, there was more than enough water for all.

  So the Utes watched as the immigrant people, the Americans, settled and were forced to enact laws to parcel out the water of the Animas and other rivers. Commodities had to be regulated and rules were required to determine who got what. You couldn’t move around in this new civilization without first establishing a complex body of laws, if for no other reason than to prevent competing claims from being resolved with the Colt and the Winchester. So the lifeblood of the natives, at the spiritual center of their existence, became a commercial commodity to their successors on the land.

  The Utes might be confined for their homes and their livelihood to the arbitrary boundaries of a reservation. But that did not also require them to adopt the transformation of an object of reverence into a matter of business and politics.

  Leonard Cloud and his brothers parked their trucks near a juniper grove on the Animas and sat in the shade of the trees near the flowing stream. Now, well into the summer, the flow was substantially diminished. The spring snowmelt up in the San Juan Mountains had come and gone. But residential and commercial demands on the river, from Durango and above, continued throughout the year. The Utes got whatever happened to be left.

  They picked this place to consider their situation, both because it was familiar and had been used for this purpose before and because they knew also who might be there.

  Brother Two Hawks, Cloud said to the older man resting against the juniper trunk, will you be disturbed if we spend a minute or two here?

  The old man shook his head. This river is not mine, he said.

  Well, then, one of the councilmen said, help us think what we should do about this. Up in Durango they’re making big decisions. One way or the other, it comes down on us. They’re either going to keep things as they are, which means more people using less water, or they’re going to put a dam across the river and store up more water and find more uses for it. If things stay as they are, he said, pointing at the diminished river, here’s what we’ve got. If they build a big reservoir up there, there could be more for us.

  Two Hawks had been looking steadily downstream. Those folks, he said presently, are going to do what they are going to do. There is little we can do about it.

  The younger council member spoke up. But Father, that’s the old way of thinking. We now have this energy here on the res. We finally got the government to recognize that it belongs to us. It changes everything. It means we have power. And when you have power, people have to pay attention. In the old days, we let them run our lives. No more.

  Well, I hope you’re right, the aged man said. But the power you talk about can work in all kinds of different ways. That snake over there—they stared across the stream and could barely make out the sunning rattler the old man
saw clearly—he will not bother you until you try to have power over him.

  Leonard Cloud said, Up in Durango, there are a few crazy people who are putting rifles in the gun racks in their pickups. There are all kinds of splits opening up about this water project. And whichever way it goes—this water war—the Ute people, our people, are going to be affected. We’re trying to decide whether we ought to stay well out of it, or whether we ought to get involved to try to settle it.

  Two Hawks studied him, then looked downstream again. It is pretty funny, isn’t it, when you think about our situation? Who would have thought even a few years ago that anybody up there cared about us one way or the other?

  One of the councilmen said, They’re even paying attention back there in Washington. The “Great Father”—his tone was derisive—remembered all of a sudden that there were some Indians sitting downstream who might have something to say about all this. What a wonder.

  A wonder indeed, Two Hawks said with a smile. I guess our time had to come sooner or later.

  Well, it still leaves the question about what we ought to do, Leonard Cloud sighed. Let us know if you have notions to help us. Whatever we do, even if we do nothing, it’s going to affect us pretty powerfully. We can’t let our people be hurt by this business.

  Two Hawks said, Our people have been hurt by much. Yet we survive. We go on. It is in our nature. We were not put here for nothing. I cannot speak for the others, he said, gesturing north toward Durango, but I believe and the old holy men a long time ago believed we didn’t just happen to be here. Time goes on and the people up there—again to Durango with a wave—have their own purposes. They will determine their own destiny. We must determine ours. He paused for reflection, then he continued. Though I don’t have the TV and all that, I have been following this thing. I listen to what people say. Sometimes I even go up to the town and sit on one of those benches on the street. He laughed. Those tourist people take my picture. It is my service to those people up there. But I also listen to what people say.

  He was silent again. Then he said, It’s interesting what you can learn by listening. What I learn is what you say. There is bad feeling up there. These people are fighting each other. This is very bad for them. It is very bad for us. So maybe you are right. Maybe we have no choice but to come into this thing. To take a stand. But it must be a stand that represents what is best for our people. And it must be a stand based upon the principles of our people and all people.

  After more silence, Leonard Cloud said, Speak about this some more.

  Two Hawks said, These people up there invited this struggle, this conflict, when they treated this gift—he pointed at the river—as a business, some kind of legal business. That’s done. That’s their way. Nothing we can do about that now. But maybe if we get involved in this dispute, maybe we can do some good. Maybe we can point out that this water isn’t something you own, something you possess. It is not our way. Maybe we can say, Listen, we don’t “own” this river. We share this river. We must honor this water. We must be thankful for it. To fight over this water is to dishonor it. Fighting over this gift of the mother is to dishonor the mother. The others up there may do that. We, the Ute people, cannot do this. It is not in our nature.

  The men were silent. Their respect for their elder had grown. They had been reminded what made them different from the modern people. They even thought that circumstances might have given them a destiny.

  22.

  At his ten-year-old computer in his cubicle at the Durango Herald, Patrick Carroll stared at the words from fifteen-year-old stories yet again. This was the second, in some cases the third, time he had done so. Yet even so he could not make sense of it all.

  The controversy began with the eighth paragraph in an otherwise routine La Plata County Commission story on page five of the paper. An unidentified citizen angrily denounced the chairman, Dan Sheridan, for improper actions relating to the Animas–La Plata water project and insisted that he reveal the full details of his “sordid” involvement. Nothing more. There was no report on the reaction of other commission members or the audience.

  Then, a week or so later, there was a letter to the editor from someone not readily recognizable in the community calling for Sheridan’s resignation on the grounds that he was manipulating the project for his own benefit. Though this kind of activity wasn’t common, most of Durango paid little attention on the assumption these people were unrelated public scolds of the kind that randomly appear. Then, after Sheridan gave a report on the issues confronting the county at a local service club, a local businesswoman, new to the community, rose to confront him with these accusations and insisted on his response.

  Daniel Sheridan had seemed awkward and even somewhat defensive, at least in the Herald’s report of the exchange, and brushed the question aside with the comment that his only interest in Animas–La Plata was what was best for the region.

  Patrick Carroll found a story in the Durango Herald morgue of a more serious incident about two weeks after the confrontation at the meeting. At a public town hall meeting conducted by his father, Congressman Patrick Carroll, at least two people stood up to denounce Sheridan and call for both his resignation and a thorough investigation of his involvement in Animas–La Plata. Each claimed to have evidence that Sheridan was pursuing his own financial interests in the project and that he might be guilty of unethical or even illegal practices.

  Caught off guard, the congressman said that he had known the Sheridan family for many years, that he had never known of anyone in the family, including Dan Sheridan, to be engaged in anything like what was being alleged, and concluded by insisting that the accusers produce whatever evidence they had. The two accusers stormed out of the meeting, shouting as they left that the congressman was merely covering up for his crony friend and that it proved all politicians were alike.

  All this activity covering a month or so seemed unrelated. But then, after a monthly meeting of the county commission, one of Daniel Sheridan’s co-commissioners told a Herald reporter, in answer to her persistent questions, that perhaps Sheridan ought to disclose any private interest he might have in the project. When pressed by the reporter as to whether this ought to be a matter for the commission itself to investigate, the confused commissioner allowed that any public body like the county commission had to keep its own house in order to belay any citizen doubts.

  That comment produced a page two story in the Herald the following day headlined: “Commissioner Calls for Full Sheridan Investigation.” The next day, a Rocky Mountain News stringer from Grand Junction appeared in Durango to probe what seemed like a promising public scandal. That reporter tracked down the two protestors at the congressman’s town hall meeting and quoted both in the News as saying they had solid evidence, though no documents, that Sheridan was receiving payoffs from a prominent New York investment bank for intervening with the Southern Ute Tribe on behalf of the bank. They further alleged that Sheridan might need the money also to help cover up a scandalous relationship with a prominent local woman.

  Now the Sheridan story was statewide and was attracting attention in business, social, and political circles in the region. Though noted for their western laissez-faire attitudes toward personal privacy, even the worthy citizens of Durango proved not to be immune to interesting, if not also salacious, gossip. The Sheridan story was spreading and increasing in intensity and dimension.

  Patrick Carroll tried to take an objective approach to it. But as he had earlier told Professor Smithson and even Mr. Sheridan himself, it still didn’t make sense. Who were the early questioners? Why weren’t they identified? Why hadn’t the Herald insisted on identifying them and questioning them before running the story? He knew the answer to the last question at least. The reporter would have had to spend a day, or several, finding those making the accusations and persuading them to identify themselves and to document their charges, and then the story would be severa
l days old.

  Sheridan could certainly have done better at explaining himself once confronted at the service club lunch. But how? How do you disprove a negative? Once charged, a public official has the burden of disproving something that didn’t happen. The simple denial, based primarily on reputation and standing, becomes just that. And a denial is a story, Patrick Carroll ruefully thought.

  It was at this point that the former mayor, Walter Hurley, had intervened with his public call, contained in yet another letter to the Durango Herald editor, for Daniel Sheridan to take a leave of absence or even resign until the whole thing got cleared up. This would be best, he argued, for Mr. Sheridan, but it would also be in the best interest of the community. Starting with an anonymous rumor, then accusation, the weight of the furor had now shifted solidly against Daniel Sheridan. At the monthly meeting of the county commission a week or so later, the vice chair of the commission read the one-sentence letter from Daniel Sheridan resigning, “with great regret,” from the commission.

  By now Patrick Carroll was making himself a pest with his boss, Mrs. Farnsworth. He had worn out his welcome with the Herald’s managing editor, who constantly pushed him to leave the ancient story alone and get on with current issues and who, in any case, had not been around when the Sheridan case had erupted and had no interest in it or time for it. But the young reporter knew that Mrs. Farnsworth had had a ringside seat at the ruckus those many years ago and that she had hinted in the past that she was less than pleased with its handling at the time by the community at large and by her paper.

  He did deny it, she said with a sigh to the rumpled young reporter leaning against her doorframe yet again. And, guess what, we ran the denial. “Sheridan Denies Accusations.” What else could we do? But I think that was the turning point for him. I don’t know for sure, but my instincts tell me that’s when he saw no way out. Charge. Counter-charge. Accusation. Denial.