The Deadly River

by Jeff Noonan

  Ray walked out to the car with the sheriff and his prisoner as Dawn and Lee watched. When the car began moving, Lee put the chair back where it had been and moved back to his stool at the counter. He picked up his fork to continue his meal, but Dawn stopped him. “My goodness, Lee, that stuff is cold as a January day. Give me a minute and I’ll have a fresh meal out here for you.”

  Ray came in as she was finishing her comment. He took a seat next to Lee and asked, “Are you okay, Lee? That was a bit out of the ordinary.”

  Lee grinned. “To tell the truth, I’m shaking like a leaf now that it’s over. I was fine until I sat down and realized that the window over there was shot out. Somehow that never impressed me until now.”

  “Shit. You’re right. I have to get a patch over that or we’ll have field mice in here tonight.” Ray walked over to the window and busied himself for a moment, pulling glass shards out of the frame. Then he returned to stand close to Lee, his huge frame dwarfing everything around him. “Lee, I don’t know whether you realize it or not, but you saved Dawn from what could have been a horrible experience tonight. I can’t even put into words the debt that I owe you. Let me just say that, wherever you go or whatever you do in the future, you should know that you have a friend here in Montana. If you are ever in any kind of trouble, just reach out and I’ll be there. I really mean that.”

  Lee was startled. “Thanks, but I didn’t do that much. I just got lucky.”

  “In this life, we make our own luck. You made the luck for both of us today. Don’t ever forget, Son, you have a friend here.” He moved on past Lee. “Now I need to find a piece of plywood and my hammer. I’ll be back.

  By the time Lee had finished his meal, Ray had nailed a big piece of plywood over the window and Dawn had cleaned up the mess that Willy had left in his wake. The two made arrangements with Lee to meet in the morning and Lee prepared to leave. As he did, Ray turned to him with a question, “By the way, Lee, you were pretty handy with that pistol. Kept Willy under control really well. Where did you learn to handle a handgun like that?”

  Lee grinned sheepishly. “I didn’t. I’m pretty good with a rifle, but I’ve never held a pistol in my life. I was faking it, trying to remember how John Wayne and Gene Autry did it in the movies.”

  Their incredulous laughter followed him as he left the café, walking toward the little log cabins.

  That night Lee lay awake for a long time. The events of the day had started his mind working faster than it had since he had made the decision to embark on this odyssey two months ago. It had been his first real conversations with other human beings since he’d left his Aunt and Uncle’s home in Media. Thinking about it, he had to admit that it had been pleasant to actually hold a conversation again. Plus, he’d found that he actually liked these people.

  It had been a long two months. After leaving Pennsylvania, he had headed directly for Montana. When he crossed into the state, he soon realized that the eastern part of the state wasn’t the likely location of the lake he sought. The prairies and badlands didn’t fit the “Montana Mountain Lake” title of the painting. So he headed directly for Glacier National Park, thinking that would be a more likely location. He’d hiked in to all of Glacier’s lakes without finding anything that looked close to the painting. Then, leaving the park, he had worked his way south through the Seeley Lake wilderness. He saw dozens of lakes, sometimes hiking days to get to them, but none were right. By the time he emerged from that range of mountains, he found himself in Missoula, a bit discouraged, but still determined.

  From Missoula, he’d decided to travel west to the Idaho border and then work his way back, to the south and east through the Bitterroot Mountains. The maps he purchased before leaving Pennsylvania showed dozens of small lakes in this range of mountains and he planned to see them all.

  He’d almost made it to the Idaho border when his car had broken down. Now he was here, and he’d even managed to stop a robbery. It was something to think about and something for the eighteen-year-old orphan to take pride in. When he finally dozed off, it was with a smile on his face.

  CHAPTER FIVE: POLLUTED RIVER

  The trip to Big River was uneventful. Lee sat in the back seat as Ray and Dawn kept up a running conversation, telling him their life history and pointing out the sights along the highway.

  It turned out that the two had been high school sweethearts from a nearby town named Dublin. Ray’s uncle and Dawn’s father had pooled their resources when the two married and had put the down payment on the little truck stop where the two had found work. It had been a struggle, but the investment was finally paying off as more and more tourists and truckers were finding this part of Montana. Both Ray and Dawn had been taking correspondence courses for years, learning the finer points of running a business.

  It soon became apparent to Lee that these two people were one of the happiest, most loving, couples that he had ever known.

  When they arrived at the jail, Sheriff Rose gave them pens and paper and led them to a conference room where they were told to each independently write a description of the events of the past evening. The sheriff stayed in the room to ensure that they didn’t compare notes while composing their statements. When they finished, he reviewed their work, asking questions and making notes on the papers. At one point, he became concerned and compared Dawn’s report to Lee’s. “Both of you say that this guy mentioned “tree-loving” and the fact that Ray somehow caused him to lose his job. Is this right?”

  Lee and Dawn both answered in the affirmative. The sheriff thought for a moment and then asked Ray, “Do you know what he was talking about?”

  “Not really, Sheriff. I did help Kurt Kochran a bit with the fight against clear-cutting the cedars up the Little Joe, but I don’t think anyone around here knows about that.”

  The sheriff smiled wryly at that comment. “There ain’t nothing that the sawmill people and Bill Wards don’t know about that cedar thing. They have government people all over the place that are well-paid for information. I’ve run into them before. Between us, we probably won’t be able to prove that Wards had a hand in this, but I’d bet on it. Watch your back, Ray.”

  Sheriff Rose became quiet then, obviously in deep thought, looking up at a picture of President Eisenhower on the conference room wall. Finally he broke his silence. “Please don’t repeat this. I’m planning to use it as I look further into this so-called robbery. But you should know that when I searched Willy Gohmert last night, he had almost a thousand dollars in his pocket. All cash in small bills. Now I know for a fact that Willy hasn’t had a pot to pee in since he’s been here. He came to town a while back with an old Nash Rambler that died and was junked six months ago. He hasn’t worked at much of anything, just part-time stuff, since he’s been here. But now he has that cash in his pocket. It just don’t add up.”

  It was Dawn that answered. “So you think someone paid Willy to rob us?”

  “I dunno, Dawn. I hate to think that anyone around here would do that, but I just don’t see any other answer. I plan to let Willy cool his heels for a while, then I’ll get serious. Maybe I can shake something out of him. In the meantime, please be very careful. If it were me, I’d try to always have at least two people in your place when it’s open for business this summer.”

  Ray Moore sounded thoughtful when he answered, “You’re right Frank. We’ll be watching ourselves.”

  With that, the sheriff went back to reading and asking questions. Soon he finished and thanked them for their efforts. They left the jail and stopped at the local Gambles Store so Dawn could buy some pans that she needed. Soon they were back on the road, heading for St. Dubois.

  On the way home, Lee caught himself admiring the beauty of the Clarks Fork River that unfolded beside the highway. Thinking about the politician he had read about the previous day, he again wondered how the man could consider this to be so polluted. During a lull in the conversation, he decided to see what Ray and Dawn had to say about this.


  “I was reading in the paper yesterday about some politician who is saying that this river is in bad shape. He was saying all kinds of bad things about it and about the bigger businesses around here. But I am looking at the river and it is really beautiful from where I sit. What’s the story on that guy?”

  Ray and Dawn exchanged concerned glances before Ray answered, “That’s a tough one to answer, Lee. There’s a lot of emotion around here about what they’re calling ‘the environment’. The politician you’re talking about is a guy named Kurt Kochran. I think he’s a helluva fine man. But he’s a strong advocate for the environment and has ruffled a lot of feathers. People are really worried that Kochran and his friends will push the environment so hard that the sawmills and mines will close and they’ll lose their jobs. Then there are some who play up the situation for their own purposes. People like Bill Wards use the tree-hugger rumors to their advantage, claiming that they’re forced to pay low wages because of the cost of dealing with environmental regulations. It is pure BS, but it keeps the serfs in line for the good Mr. Wards. So anything having to do with the environment has become a really touchy subject around here for the past year or so. It seems to be getting worse all the time. I just wish the two groups could meet in the middle on this. But there are people on both sides of the issue that are making money off the conflict, so I’m sure it’ll go on for a long time.”

  Ray stopped talking for a moment, then concluded his thoughts with, “As businesspeople, we try to keep our thoughts to ourselves, so we don’t piss off either side. But sometimes it’s really hard to keep quiet.”

  Ray paused and Lee thought about this for a moment before coming back with another question. “But what is the truth? Is the river polluted? What about that clear-cutting thing they mentioned in the paper. Is this Kochran guy right or is he just over-reacting?

  “Well, let me take your questions one at a time. As far as the river goes, I’ll take you for a little trip after we drop Dawn off at the café. You can make your own decision on the river. As for the ‘clear-cutting’, that’s the name of a total-wipeout kind of logging where the loggers cut 100% of the trees and vegetation in a designated area. Recently, the Forest Service has been letting the loggers take entire mountains and cut every living thing off them. You can see a lot of them around Missoula and they’re becoming more common around here.”

  Ray stopped talking for long enough to pass a truck, then went on, “When the loggers finish with a clear-cut project, the mountains are stripped naked and turned into big muddy heaps of dirt covered by the ruts of logging roads. That’s what they call clear-cutting. It’s an awful thing to see.”

  “Why does the Forest Service allow it?”

  “It started with the old mining booms. Even today, you can still see the clear-cut mountains around places like Butte and over in northern Idaho. The mine people cut every useable or burnable bit of wood off every mountain within range of their wagons. The fumes from the smelters killed off any vegetation that was still alive in a fifty mile radius.

  “But the loggers, back before the days of the automobile also clear-cut the parts of the forest close to civilization. It got so bad that clear-cutting was actually banned for a few years after the turn of the century. In fact, the owners of the St. Dubois sawmill and some of the other smaller sawmills still refuse to do any clear-cut logging. But the problem for the Forest Service is manpower. If they aren’t going to clear-cut, the Forest Service has to go through each designated timber-cutting area, select the trees that are to be harvested, and hand-mark each tree. This is a very slow, manpower-intensive, process. They can do it in order to meet the requirements of the smaller sawmills, but they just don’t have the manpower to keep up with the bigger mills like the International Match mill in Big River. The demand for more and more trees to satisfy those big mills has forced the Forest Service to okay clear-cutting. They try to keep it back in more remote areas, but it is still too nasty for some of us. Kurt Kochran has convinced some of his political allies to fight this as well as mining pollution and similar problems, so he’s really a controversial guy.”

  They pulled in to the café parking lot and Dawn went inside. The two men got into Ray’s big pickup and they headed for the river, as Ray had promised. Soon they were on a dirt road that led to the spot where the St. Dubois River ran into the Clark Fork. When they reached the wide river delta, Ray turned off the pickup and they got out.

  “Okay, Lee. I want you to walk about a hundred feet up the bank of the St. Dubois. Then go the same distance up the Clark Fork. When you’re done, let’s see if you can tell me what’s different about the two rivers.”

  Lee did as asked, walking first along the bank of the smaller river, the St. Dubois. Ray accompanied him, staying mostly silent as they walked. When they had gone the requisite hundred feet upstream, Ray stopped him.

  “Okay, let me tell you something about this river. It starts west of here, near the Idaho/Montana border, up on Lookout Pass. It goes through two or three tiny towns before it gets here, but most of the way it bypasses all the population centers, flowing through mountain gorges. A couple of miles upstream is a swimming hole that we’ve been using for years. There isn’t any business or industry along this stream’s route. You can drink this water if you’re thirsty.”

  Lee squatted beside the river and, cupping his hands, tried a sip of the water. It was clear and sweet. He nodded and smiled at Ray.

  The two then walked back to the car, turned right, and started up the bank of the Clark Fork River. Lee hadn’t gone more than twenty feet, when he stopped beside a small eddy in the river. “What’s that?” He was pointing at a brown froth that was floating on the water and lining the river bank. Where it had washed up on the river bank, the froth had hardened into a sticky web-like coating that covered rocks, sand and plants alike.

  Ray smiled at the question. It was a slow, somehow sad, smile. “The Clark Fork originates east of here, over in the Butte and Anaconda area. Butte is a big copper mining town and Anaconda has the smelters that process the ore from Butte and some other Montana mines. This river flows from the Anaconda area west toward Missoula. Near Missoula, it’s joined by the Blackfoot and the Bitterroot rivers, both of which have big sawmills dumping into them. From Missoula, the Clark Fork goes through four communities, including Big River with its big sawmill, before it gets here. What you are seeing on the river bank there is some kind of a chemical concoction that comes from the runoff from the mines, smelters, and sawmills upriver from here.”

  Ray paused to wait for Lee, who had bent over to look at the water more closely. “Even the water under the froth is kind of yellow-brown color!” He stood, still looking at the river for a long period. Suddenly he pointed at a small mass of white and brown floating by them about twenty feet into the river. “What’s that thing?”

  Ray chuckled, a sound that carried no mirth, “What do you think it is?”

  “I hate to say it, but it looks like a turd with some toilet paper beside it”

  “Yeah. Around here we call those things ‘Brown Trout’. If you stand here for a while, you’ll see plenty of them. We don’t eat the fish from this river.”

  “You’re not kidding, are you?” Lee looked at Ray as if he was pleading for an affirmative answer.

  “Nope. Just about every house and business on the river from here to Anaconda uses this river as a sewer. They just pipe directly from their toilets and sinks right down to the river. There’s even still a few that have platforms over the river with outhouses on them. Now do you see why Kurt Kochran is so outspoken?”

  “Man, it looked so beautiful from the highway!”

  “Yeah. I bet you’re glad you didn’t stop for a drink of water though, eh?”

  “No kidding! But, how can people do this? It’s disgusting.”

  “No one thinks. The general consensus is that it’s been this way for a hundred years and it’s just the way things are done around here. No one thinks about it and when a g
uy like Kochran comes along and shows people their bad habits, it doesn’t go over well. That’s why he’s become so unpopular.”

  Ray stood there for a moment while both of them just watched the river flow by, each lost in their own thoughts. Then Ray spun on his heels and walked toward the pickup. “C’mon. You’ve seen it. Now let’s go get some lunch.”

  Lee couldn’t believe his eyes when they came in sight of the truck stop. Twenty or thirty people were milling around outside and every seat in the café was full.

  Even Ray was astounded. “Wow! The mill guys got off work about a half-hour ago and it looks like a bunch of them must’ve decided to come here. They’re probably looking for gossip about last night. Big news, I guess.” He laughed aloud at the sight as he maneuvered the pickup through the crowd to his usual parking space.

  Lee was not sure about all of this. “I’m going to sneak out of here, Ray. I think I’ll go over to the cabin and get cleaned up. I’ll be back for supper after this dies down.” Ray nodded his understanding.

  But that was not to be this night. The crowd closed in around the pickup and there was no escape for either of them. Everyone had heard the story of last night’s encounter and wanted to hear more from the two of them. Lee didn’t want to say much and he deferred to Ray, who became the center of the crowd. But Ray didn’t let Lee off so easily. Coming over to where Lee stood, he placed one of his huge arms over Lee’s shoulders and began telling the story. In his story, Lee was a fearless fighter who had saved Dawn from a fate worse than death. By the time Ray got to the end of the story and told the crowd about Lee’s “John Wayne and Gene Autry” comment, the crowd roared with laughter. A big man in a logger’s clothes yelled “Three Cheers for the dude.” The crowd erupted in cheers.