A Friend of the Earth

by T. C. Boyle

  ‘Perfect for ten- or twelve–inch pipe,’ Andrea added. She was in a pair of khaki shorts and a T–shirt, her legs and arms tanned the color of iced tea, plastic wraparounds for sunglasses, Angels cap askew, halo and all. This was her hiker’s disguise – that and the map in her hand – and she stood at the edge of the road shuffling her feet and grinning as Teo produced a bicycle pump and bent to his work. ‘Of course,’ she continued, ‘for bigger pipe we use a drill and those little eye screws? You know what I mean, Ty – the kind of thing you use for hanging plants? You just screw four of them in, or maybe six, depending, and then stretch some chicken wire across the gap.’

  ‘Right, and for really big pipe, pipe you can walk through’ – Teo was off the road now, down in the gully, wedging the ball deep into the culvert – ‘you use a pickax, just punch holes in the bottom of the thing, I mean really tear it up, because eventually the water’ll seep in underneath and undermine the whole business.’

  ‘It’s really pretty easy,’ Andrea said. She was enjoying this, a little field trip, she the professor and Tierwater the student. Call it Ecodefense 101, or Monkeywrenching for the Beginner.

  Teo’s face, peering up from the culvert, a grin to match hers, the sun glancing off the shaven dome of his head: ‘Not to mention fun. You’re having fun, aren’t you, Ty?’

  ‘I don’t know – am I? What if somebody comes, what then?’

  ‘We’re hikers, Ty, that’s all,’ Andrea said. ‘Here, look at my map. Besides which, there’s nobody within ten miles of us, and all the loggers are hunkered around watching the game – ‘

  ‘What game?’ Tierwater said. ‘Is there a game on today?’

  ‘There’s always a game, football, basketball, hockey, championship bowling, whatever – and they’re all watching it and getting liquored up so they can go out on the town and get into a brawl someplace. We don’t even exist. And nobody’ll know about this till spring runoff.’

  Fine. But would it save the forest? And beyond that, would it save the world? Or would it only serve to provoke the timber company all the more, like the Oregon fiasco? Where had that gotten them? What had that saved? Even the press was bad, portraying Tierwater as a subspecies of violent lunatic (two of the flattopped kid’s teeth had been knocked loose, and the building inspector claimed he’d suffered a bruised windpipe), and Earth Forever! as a collection of unhinged radicals dedicated to killing jobs and destroying the economy. Still, as he shouldered his pack and moved on up the road, Tierwater understood that he didn’t care, not about the press or the organization or the trees or anything else: all he cared about now was destruction.

  ‘You see, Ty, what I wanted to tell you is you’re in a unique position.’ Teo shifted his own pack with a twist of his shoulders and took two quick steps to catch up. ‘My hands are tied – I mean, they’re watching me day and night, phones tapped, the works – but you’re Tom Drinkwater now, you’re nobody, and you can have all the fun you want. Right here, for instance, where the road narrows by that bend up there? See it? Perfect place for a spikeboard.’

  ‘What’s a spikeboard?’

  ‘Maybe a four–foot length of two–by–four, studded with sawed–off pieces of rebar, set at a forty–five degree angle. You anchor the thing in the road with two L–shaped strips of the same rebar – invaluable stuff, really, you’d be surprised – maybe a foot and a half, two feet long, so the board doesn’t shift when they run over it. Then you just kick some dirt on top of it and it’s practically invisible.’

  Andrea, loping along, all stride and motion, hands swinging, eyes electric with excitement: ‘That slows them down all right.’ She let out a barely contained whinny of a laugh that rode up into the trees and startled the whole world into silence. And then Teo laughed along with her – a soft nasal snicker that sounded as if someone were drowning a cat – and Tierwater joined in too.

  An hour later they arrived at their destination, a bald spot carved out of the mountain at the end of the road. On one side was the unbroken line of shadow that was the forest; on the other there was nothing but a dome of rock and debris that fell away into the valley below. There were machines everywhere, naked steel and scuffed paint glinting in the sun. It was dry underfoot, the duff scattered and pulverized, crushed twigs poking out of the soil like bones, dust like a second skin. In the center of the bald spot, a thin coil of smoke twisted up into the air where a heap of charred branches, crushed pine cones and other debris had been swept up by the Cats and left to smolder over the weekend.

  They scouted the place as thoroughly as they could from the cover of the trees, then stepped out into the open. ‘Don’t worry, Ty, we’re only hikers, remember?’ Andrea said. ‘And it’s not like we’re trespassing. This is still the Sequoia National Forest, and whether the Freddies would admit it or not, we have as much right to be here as the – what does that say on the loader over there? Can you read that?’

  ‘Cross Creek Timber Co.,’ Teo read.

  ‘Right – as the Cross Creek Timber Company.’

  They walked right up to the machines, Teo and Andrea alternately lecturing about the most effective way to disable them, pointing out the salient features of a Clark scraper, a shovel loader and a pair of Kenmore log trucks parked nose to tail at the mouth of the road. Tierwater didn’t like being out in the open in broad daylight, even if there was no one around. He kept looking over his shoulder, expecting to catch the quick glint of the sun flashing off a pair of binoculars from the cover of a blind, or worse – a couple of forest rangers, with sidearms, ambling across the burned–over field. Or cops. Or FBI agents. And this was yet another movie, and he the reluctant star of it. What did FBI agents look like? Robert Stack? Tommy Lee Jones?

  ‘See, they burn it over to put something back in the soil,’ Teo was saying, squatting to sift the blackened dirt through his fingers. ‘Gets rid of the debris too. Then they come in and plant in their neat rows and twenty more acres of old growth become a plantation.’

  They were in the shadow of the shovel loader, a big cranelike thing that heaved the logs up onto the trucks once the Cats had knocked them down and the trimmers had removed the branches. Andrea slipped on a pair of cheap cotton gloves and unscrewed the filler cap on the crankcase. ‘Right here, Ty – this is where you pour the sand, tonight, when it’s dark. Medium–grit silicon carbide is even better, but obviously we’re not going to haul anything extra all the way out here. And don’t forget your boots.’

  All three of them, at Teo’s insistence, had slipped sweatsocks over their hiking boots before they emerged from the woods – to cover up the waffle pattern on the soles. It was daylight, and they were hikers – only hikers, nothing but hikers – but they were taking no chances. ‘I won’t,’ Tierwater promised. ‘But I tell you, I don’t know if I can wait till dark. I’m here, the machines are here, the fucking artificial pines are down the road – I wouldn’t mind torching the whole business, plantation, Cats, the whole fucking thing.’

  ‘I know, Ty,’ Andrea said, and her hand was on his arm, a gentle hand, a persuasive hand, a wifely hand that spoke volumes with a squeeze, ‘but you won’t.’

  When the lesson was over for the day, the three of them retired to a creek bed half a mile away and Andrea spread out a picnic lunch – smoked–duck sausage, Asiago cheese, artichoke hearts, fresh tomatoes and baguettes, replete with a stream–chilled bottle of Orvieto. They drank a toast to Tierwater’s first covert action – coming action, that is – and then Andrea and Teo shouldered their packs and headed up the streambed to the trail that would, in three hours’ time, take them back to Ratchiss’ cabin. And Tierwater? He settled in to feel the sun on his face, read a book, watch the sky and wait till the day closed down and the moon rose up over the bald spot on the mountain.

  It was past nine when he woke. Something had crossed the stream not fifty feet from where he lay, something big, and it startled him out of a dreamless sleep. The first thing he thought of, even before he fully recalled where he
was or why, was Sierra. He checked his watch, listened again for the splashing – it was a deer, had to be; either that or an FBI agent – and pictured her dangling her big feet over the arm of the mopane easy chair, reading The Catcher in the Rye under the dull, staring gaze of the kongoni head in Ratchiss’ living room. She wasn’t here tonight, and she wasn’t going to be present – ever again – for any nighttime activities of any kind. He was determined that she was going to have a normal life – or as normal a life as you can have living under an assumed name in a museum of African memorabilia in an A–frame in the hind end of nowhere. She was going to go to school, learn about the Visigoths and prime numbers, go to dances, acquire a new squadron of evil friends, experiment with pot and booze, become passionate about affectless bands, debate meat–eaters, rebel and recant, have her nose ring reinserted and drive a convertible at a hundred and ten. In five years – four and a half, actually – she could even have her identity back.

  As for Teo, there was never any question of his participating in anything like this, not for real, not anymore – he was Earth Forever!’s poster boy now, the big fund–raiser, and he couldn’t afford to get caught in a covert action. He could chain himself to nuclear reactors and tree–sit and preach and publish all he wanted to, but his tire–slashing days were over. ‘Really, Ty,’ he said, working the corkscrew with the sun flattening his face and the butt of the wine bottle clenched between his thighs, ‘you understand why I can’t risk any extracurricular activities anymore, don’t you?’ The cork slid from the bottle with a wet oozing pop of release. ‘But I envy you, I do.’

  And Andrea. She’d paid her fine, like Teo, and gotten off with probation for the Siskiyou incident – she hadn’t assaulted anybody. And who knew it was her in that turd–brown car? Or at least that’s what Teo was thinking. Maybe they’d let her back in, maybe Fred could do something … ‘About the kidnapping. Or abduction, or whatever. The Sierra thing.’

  Tierwater watched her. She’d tugged the brim of the baseball cap down to keep the sun out of her face and it immobilized her hair as she sliced cheese and portioned out the wine. She didn’t say anything, but Tierwater could read the look on her face. Second thoughts. She was having second thoughts.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘there’s no reason I can’t do this myself. How hard can it be? In fact, I insist. I know the drill. I know the trail out of here better than either of you.’ Andrea looked up. The brim of the cap threw a shadow over her face. ‘Right, hon?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel right about it.’ That was what she said, and she might even have meant it, or thought she meant it, but she was already looking for a way out of the whole mess, whether she realized it or not. ‘You sure you want to do this by yourself, Ty?’

  She’d asked him twice. Once over the wine and duck sausage, and then when she bent to kiss him just before she and Teo packed up and left.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he told her. ‘Hey, the Fox always worked by himself, didn’t he?’

  But now it was dark, and he was alone, and something was splashing in the creek. When he’d fallen asleep, it was on a scoured pan of granite just above the high–water mark, in a place where the spring floods had scooped out a hollow in the rock, and he lay there as if in the palm of a sculpted hand, the water continuously butting up against it and rushing by with the white noise of infinity. A minute passed, and then another. Whatever it was that had wakened him was gone now. He listened for a minute more to be sure, then pushed himself up and flung the pack over his shoulder. Before he knew it, he was weaving through the debris of the clear–cut, his footsteps muffled by the sweatsocks stretched over his boots, a gibbous moon showing him the way with a light as pale and cold as the ambient light of a dream.

  (And what was I carrying in that pack? The tools of my new trade. Pipe wrench, socket wrenches, gloves, wire cutters, hacksaw, flashlight, plastic tubing and plastic funnel, a couple of granola bars, bota bag, sheath knife, matches. I was equipped to wreak havoc, no excuses, no regrets. The least of those machines was worth fifty thousand dollars, and I was prepared to destroy every working part I could locate – but subtly, subtly, so they’d see nothing amiss and run their stinking diesel engines till they choked and seized. I only wished I could be there to see it happen, see the looks on their faces, see the trees I’d saved standing tall while the big yellow machines spat and belched and ground to an ignominious and oh–so–expensive halt.)

  Tierwater scouted the place twice – no one and nothing moved; the silence was absolute – and then he slipped on the black cotton gloves and began servicing the machinery. He hit the shovel loader first, unscrewing the filler cap on the manifold as Andrea had showed him, neatly inserting the plastic tubing and then pouring cup after cup of sand (or decomposed granite, actually) into the funnel. It sifted down and into the innards of the engine with a soft gratifying swish, and it was that sound, the sound of sand in a plastic tube, that he would forever identify with nightwork – and revenge.

  He went to each of the vehicles in succession, working not only on the engines but on all the lubrication fittings he could find, and when he was done with the heavy machinery, he turned his hand to the two trucks. Tinkering, tapping, murmuring directions to himself under his breath, he lost all sense of time. When finally he thought to check his watch, he was amazed to see it was past three in the morning. He had to get going, had to get out of there and head down the moonlit trail that would take him back home to the safety and anonymity of his bed, and already he could see ahead to the next day, a late–afternoon drink at the bar, his ears attuned to the buzz of drunken conversation ebbing and flowing around him. Sabotage? What do you mean, sabotage? Where? When? You’re kidding. Now, who would do a thing like that?

  The night breathed in, breathed out. He stood there looking up into the nullity of the sky, and for a long moment he didn’t move at all. What was he feeling? Satisfaction, yes, the special charge that comes of knowing you’ve done your best, the true sweet exhaustion of a job well done, but something more – anger. He was angry still. This was nothing, the smallest pinprick in the web of progress, the death of a few machines – maybe, if he was lucky, of a logging company. But what about the trees? What about all those artificial pulpwood trees in the Penny Pines Plantation an hour down the road? They were there still, weren’t they, and until they were gone, eliminated, erased from the face of the mountain, there was no forest here. No forest at all.

  He found himself walking. Not down the path, not toward the cabin and Andrea and his bed, but toward the place where the planted pines ran on as far as the eye could see. The air was cool – temperature in the low sixties, or fifties even – but he was sweating as he walked, and even as he sweated he stepped up the pace. Fifty minutes later he was in the middle of the plantation, down on his knees in the dry, yielding, friable dirt, and in his hands, the matches. There was the sudden sizzle of the struck match, the bloom of light as he touched it to one of the random heaps of shorn branches, and then the quick fingers of flame racing through the desiccated needles. He watched it take, watched the first tree explode in violent color against the black of the night, and even as he ran, even as he fought down the pain in his knee and the screaming of his lungs, the world at his back was transfigured, lit so spontaneously and so brightly it was as if the sun had come up early.

  Andrea murmured something, a snippet of dream dialogue, and rolled over. The windows were infused with the green light of seven–thirty in the morning, and when Tierwater lifted the covers and slid in beside her, the tranquil hot familiar odor of the nesting animal rose to envelop him, the smell of his wife’s body, her beautiful naked slumbering body, rich in all its properties and functions. He nuzzled at her ear and worked an arm underneath her so he could cup her breasts in both hands. He was excited. Burning up with it. She murmured again, moved her buttocks against him in a sleepy, precoital wriggle. ‘You’re back,’ she said. ‘I am,’ he whispered, and felt her nipples harden. H
e was thinking of Jane and Sherry and half a dozen other girls and women he’d known, and then she turned to face him, to kiss him, and he was thinking of her, nobody but her.

  Afterward, they lay side by side and stared up into the rafters as the house began to stir beneath them. There was the sound of a flushing toilet, then the wheeze of the refrigerator door and the low hum of Sierra’s tape deck as the muted throb of gloom and doom filtered up through the floorboards. Voices. Sierra’s, Teo’s. The swat of the screen door, and then Ratchiss’ ‘What ho!’ and Teo’s whispered response.

  ‘You smell like smoke,’ Andrea said.

  ‘Me?’ Tierwater knew he’d gone too far, knew they’d suspect arson once the machines went down, and he’d heard the first of the planes rumbling in to attack the fire even as he legged it on up the trail home. The lookout at Saddle Peak or the Needles must have been up early, because the helicopters were in the sky before he’d had a chance to catch his breath, and within the hour the drone of the bombers saturated the air and he looked up to see three of them scraping overhead with their wings aglow and their bellies full of fire retardant.

  She was up on one elbow now, watching him. ‘You didn’t start a campfire out there last night, did you? Because that would be stupid, really stupid – ‘

  ‘Are you kidding? It went great, every minute of it. I was like the Phantom and the Fox rolled into one, so efficient it was scary. It was a rush, it was.’

  He could feel her eyes on the side of his face, the eyes that brooked no bullshit and reduced every complexity to the basics. She was sniffing – first the air, and now him – hovering over him, her breasts soft on his chest, ruffling his hair, sniffing. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but you smell like you spent the night in the chimney.’