Graphic the Valley

by Peter Brown Hoffmeister

  “As long as you can?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “The opposite of speed climbing. I like to just hang out and wait for weather, the best entertainment God gives us.” Kenny squatted down and picked up a handful of gravel. “Weather and this landscape. The one we’re losing right now to cement and gravel.”

  I said, “Or already lost.”

  Kenny dropped the gravel pebble by pebble. He looked up at me. Smiled. “Exactly,” he said.

  We walked across the street into Camp 4. I said, “They’re trying to reallocate land to the Miwoks now. A tourism stunt.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. People would come into the park and get to see real Indians. This is how they lived. This is how they gathered berries. This is how they wove baskets.”

  Kenny shook his head. He said, “That’s fucked up. You know they’re also trying to bring in a strip mall? Well, we already have one strip mall––the Yosemite Village––but they’re trying to add fast-food restaurants and everything.”

  “Fast food?” I said.

  “Burger places,” Kenny said. “You know?”

  I didn’t know.

  “Fries, shakes, and a drive-through?” he said. “Right. You’ve never been to a fast-food joint, have you?”

  “No,” I said. “Are they bad?” I rolled up my pants and checked my leg. The final yellow of the bruise had dripped down the shin, and I wondered if I hadn’t cracked the bone. But I could walk, and almost run now.

  Kenny was grinning and nodding at me. “It’s kind of awesome that you’ve never been to one.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  “It’s kind of awesome and kind of scary.”

  “Scary why?”

  “Well,” he said, “you don’t know the difference between anything, between the good and the bad. And you have no idea what they’re trying to bring into this place.”

  I saw this on a Curry signboard:

  The National Park Service is pleased to announce a new food services contract for Yosemite National Park. Twin Burgers, in partnership with Thompson Inc., will be the food contractor for Yosemite Lodge, the Yosemite Village Store, the Ahwahnee Hotel, Curry Village, Housekeeping, and Tuolumne. Twin Burgers has made a worldwide commitment to selecting, transporting, and cooking only the healthiest and highest-quality food, and will now be serving the greater Yosemite area with over sixty years of customer service experience.

  • • •

  The day after I read the sign, Twin Burgers’ semis came into the Valley. I was at Curry when they started cooking their fries, the line of tourists backed to the parking lot. The smell was incredible. I stood on the pizza deck and breathed in and out. I’d never smelled anything so good in my life.

  I waited for a group to leave some unfinished food, and I didn’t have to wait long. The first table of customers left a few fries in the bottoms of their bags on the table. I picked them up. Lukewarm but still crunchy, fried to a yellow-brown and coated in salt. It reminded me of the first time I’d tried bacon, in the Tuolumne climbers’ camp when I was fourteen. Too unreal for food.

  I didn’t know if Thompson Inc. could be wrong if their fries tasted this good.

  A San Francisco Chronicle article said that a Twin Burgers restaurant was going to be built on the road at Housekeeping, next to the LeConte Memorial. A big, Golden T.

  In Camp 4, I heard a climber say, “Dude, they just gouged a backhoe into the ground near the Pathways. Ripping huge chunks out of the earth.”

  I walked to the construction site. A crowd had already gathered, some of them jeering the construction workers. Three deputy sheriffs stood off to the side, watching the protesters.

  Kenny was there, sitting on a moss-covered boulder, his arms wrapped around his knees. I went and sat next to him.

  He shook his head. “Architectural plans must have been drawn, discussed, and ratified before the release of the new food contract, because this was all way too fast.”

  The moss we were sitting on was like the thick carpet squares boulderers carry around to scrub off their shoes.

  Kenny said, “If they had this all set up, there’s no way to stop it now.”

  We watched as the backhoe scraped and stopped on a slab of granite. Scraped and stopped again.

  Kenny said, “Too many rocks to dig straight through though.”

  “They’ll blast a hole,” I said, “like the CCC making the step paths. My father told me the stories.” We weren’t far from the LeConte’s structure. “The granite here never stopped anything,” I said. “But I burned the Miwok forms.”

  Kenny said, “Burned what?”

  “I burned the forms for the fake longhouses they were going to build for the tourist Indians in North Wawona.”

  “Really?” he said.

  “Yeah.” I told Kenny the story, how the longhouses were planned and forms set up, how I piled the gear, dumped gasoline, and lit it in the middle of the night.

  “Like Monkey Wrench style?”

  I said, “I don’t know.”

  “The Monkey Wrench Gang? Ed Abbey? The ELF?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh man,” he said, “you don’t even know what you’re part of.”

  “I’m not part of anything,” I said. “I just don’t want this.” I pointed to the backhoe in front of us.

  “Neither do I,” Kenny said. “Neither do I.”

  The backhoe driver had turned the vehicle and moved over to a far corner of the hole to try to pry a chunk of granite from the ground. The bucket was wedging underneath the slab.

  Kenny said, “Did burning it stop development?”

  I nodded. “As far as I know they haven’t started to rebuild yet, and I haven’t seen anything written about it since. But maybe they’re just waiting for next summer.”

  “Probably,” Kenny said. “They don’t give up easily. But still, you stopped them for a whole year. That’s better than nothing. And you might be able to stop them again.”

  I fingered the scar next to my eye.

  Kenny said, “How’d you get that thing there. That scar’s kind of new, huh?”

  I said, “It’s a long story.”

  “Okay,” Kenny said.

  “Maybe another time.”

  The backhoe wrenched a four-foot-wide slab out of the ground, tilting it vertically. A worker jogged over and slid a large cable around its lower half. The cable ran to a huge winch. With the winch and the bucket, they pushed and pulled the rock out of the way.

  Kenny said, “There are prophets and there are judges.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Prophets and judges. Both are holy, but they have different jobs.”

  The backhoe was digging at another rock now, the bucket wiggling as it snapped off the slab.

  I said, “What if a person isn’t holy at all?”

  “I’m not,” Kenny looked at me. “Or maybe not. And maybe not you either. I don’t know.”

  We couldn’t do anything about that Golden T in the center of the Valley, right across from Housekeeping. We talked about sabotage but the construction company left a sheriff and a ranger in rotation. Men with guns watching over the site. And we left it alone as they laid the foundation, then set up the frame.

  • • •

  A week later, they broke ground on the second Miwok Village. The article in the Chronicle said: “In the beautiful splendor of the Yosemite Valley, a strange reclamation is taking place underneath the shadow of Half Dome…”

  The new village was at the east end, near Mirror Lake, underneath the belly of the dome, in the creek meadow. I wondered about the flood line.

  This was easy for me. I found Kenny in Camp 4, under the Thriller Boulder oak tree where so many people like to read.

  I said, “Kenny, do you want to wreck it with me?”

  “It?” he said. He folded the page he was reading in his book.

  “The new Miwok Village. Do you want to wreck it? Burn
the forms?”

  Kenny stood up, paused, then slid his feet around and did a little dance, tapping his right foot twice, then his left, and back to his right. “Oh yeah,” he said, danced some more, “I’m in.” He tossed his book to me and hopped off the ledge. “I thought you were a judge.”

  We retrieved the gas can, then Kenny siphoned from a Park Service vehicle. “It really makes the most sense,” he said. He sucked four times on the hose, caught gasoline, and spit. “Damn that tastes good,” he said, and giggled.

  We watched from the Death Slabs approach, a thousand feet up, under the northwest face of Half Dome. They cut the earth with a Caterpillar D9 like it was road repair on the 120. The workers set concrete forms down, wood-framed with two-by-twelves, rebar reinforced. It looked like the foundation would be an underlay, run with solar heating tubes, warm beneath the faux dirt floor of the “original style” structure. I’d read about that design for the first Miwok longhouse.

  Kenny said, “They’re going to pour concrete there.”

  “Yeah, concrete right next to Tenaya Creek. Next to Mirror Lake. It’s crazy.”

  “Concrete anywhere is fucked up,” he said, “but we’ve got to stop it because of your name.”

  “Right,” I said, “but it’s also going to be a Miwok longhouse which is just as wrong.”

  Kenny looked at me and said, “One hundred and fifty years, and you still don’t like the Miwoks, huh?”

  “Well,” I said, “if they’d leave us alone, stay south…” I started sliding down on my butt, the gas can catching and clanking on the rocks. We moved quickly until we got to the trees.

  • • •

  We drank water and ate homemade oatmeal–peanut butter bars Kenny kept in his pocket. Waited until dark. A security guard was stationed at the site, but he wasn’t a sheriff’s deputy and he wasn’t a Park Ranger. The security guard was reading a paperback by Maglite. I tried not to slosh the gas in the half-full, five-gallon can as I stopped at the edge of the trees. We didn’t make much noise and the guard didn’t look up. He was focused on his book. I sat down and waited. Kenny sat down next to me.

  Kenny said, “He’ll fall asleep soon.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  But he didn’t. He kept on reading.

  The security guard was to our left. The CAT D9 was to our right, off in the trees, one hundred yards from the forms, as if the company was trying to hide it. The security guard and the machine made a large triangle with the tree we were hiding behind.

  Kenny whispered to me. “Watch this.”

  He picked up a couple palm-sized rocks. He threw them as far as he could, over the top of the CAT, making thumping sounds in the woods behind.

  The guard’s head came up out of the book. He swept back and forth with his flashlight. He stayed on his chair but he didn’t read anymore. He scanned the woods in the direction of the CAT.

  Five minutes passed. We watched the guard. The guard watched the trees.

  Kenny picked up two more rocks and threw them in the same direction. The first one made a small sound in the woods, but the second rock hit the side of the CAT, producing an enormous clank.

  The security guard stood up, aimed his light in the direction of the machine, pulled his baton, and started walking toward the sound.

  As soon as he’d passed us, Kenny whispered, “Let’s go.”

  The half-full gas can weighed twenty pounds, and I had trouble jogging with it. But I went as fast as I could. When we got to the forms, I unscrewed the lid and poured gas on the two-by-twelves, walking along the outline of the wall. I looked up only once, to see if the guard’s flashlight was still searching in the woods by the machine, and it was. I could see zigzags of light in the trees behind the CAT.

  Kenny was piling gear as quietly as he could. He made a signal to dump gas there. I started to pour, and he whispered, “Save some.”

  “What?”

  “Save some for the CAT. We’ve got to burn that too.”

  I stopped pouring. There was maybe an eighth of a can left. “How are we going to do that?”

  Kenny said, “Give me the can and wait for me to get to the trees.” He pointed. “That guard’ll come running when you light this. If you wait for me to get over there before you start it, when he’s running back here, I’ll get to the CAT and already be dumping gas by the time he’s here. We’ll get him going two different directions, and I’ll circle around.”

  “I like it,” I said. “Go.”

  Kenny took the can and jogged back to the trees.

  I lit the pile with my lighter and the forms exploded like a blast of wind. Then I lit the gear pile.

  The security guard yelled and I saw his outline running back across the clearing, straight toward me as I circled behind the burn. I couldn’t see Kenny going to the machine, but I knew he was.

  I went straight back, then north, away from the trail. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw the CAT go up like a huge animal lit and burning. The security guard’s flashlight swept back and forth between the two burns.

  Kenny met me on the north side of the clearing. He had the gas can in his hand and he was laughing so hard that he was wheezing. We watched the security guard’s flashlight bounce up and down through the field.

  The creek was rushing with snowmelt, and Kenny had to spin around and throw the can high and far to get it across. Then we swam after. I found the can in the reeds.

  We hiked southwest in the trees, moving slowly now, avoiding the moss on tops of rocks, wet grass, dry tree branches. We tried not to hit anything that would scuff or imprint, anything that would leave an easy trail for people to follow the next day. We walked ten feet apart. Quiet for half an hour. Watching our feet.

  Kenny kept giggling.

  We cut west underneath North Dome, then the Arches, and arrived at the east end of the Ahwahnee property in less than half an hour. While it was still dark, I dug a grave for the gas can and buried it.

  He said, “Are you really worried someone will find it?”

  “Well, I might have to use it again.”

  “More arson?” he said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Not sure what I’ll need to do.”

  “Okay, then. You sift needles over that dirt. I’ll make an arrow and a small cairn over here to mark the direction.” He counted paces and made the marks.

  CHAPTER 9

  Jose Rey does not die on the battlefield. He is carried off the field by his warriors and survives in a grove hut.

  The elders talk about his bravery against the grizzly, when he fought the animal alone in the dark with a sheath knife. There is a scar down Jose Rey’s back like a river running next to his spine. He says that the scar is from his dance with the bear, when he cut around the heart, his fist doubling in size, when he left the knife inside the bear and pulled out the animal’s heart.

  Jose Rey releases venom in his last days and there are many who listen. They say that his venom is truth. He says that the ghosts are tearing through the blackberry patch, rending the roots from the ground. If they can, they will find a way to take the very ground itself.

  Carlos walked up to me near the Upper Falls path. He surprised me because he didn’t sneak. He knew where I lived.

  I grabbed a rock.

  He held out his hands. He said, “It’s not like that. We’re even now, one to one. Or actually—” he touched his scar—“mine’s worse.”

  I said, “What do you want?”

  He smiled. “I know you burned the new Miwok forms.”

  “You don’t know anything, Carlos.”

  “Look,” he said, “I don’t mind. That’s fine with me.”

  I laughed at him. “I didn’t ask you. And you’re a ranger anyway. I know you care about that.”

  “I do?” he said. “Is that right?”

  I was holding the rock and he was standing with his hands up. He said, “We need to talk about some things.” He dropped his hands and put them in his pockets.

&nbs
p; The rock I held was heavy enough to crush his skull, a Chief Tenaya rock. I said, “Maybe I don’t want to talk to you about things.”

  “Maybe you don’t,” he said, “but we should talk anyway. Then you’ll understand what’s going on.”

  I waited. I didn’t go toward him or away.

  “For example,” he said, “Twin Burgers is paying private investigators to supplement the FBI’s investigation of what the Park Service calls ‘The Yosemite Arsons.’ Three burns in one year. Twin Burgers doesn’t want similar trouble with its Valley locations. The security guard from the night of the third arson saw two men, but he didn’t have good descriptions. Young and athletic. Long, dirty hair. The FBI and the investigators are pursuing those descriptions.”

  I hoped Kenny hadn’t talked to anyone about anything. I said, “What does that have to do with me?”

  “You and I both know what that has to do with you, Tenaya.” Carlos turned and walked off down the trail. I watched him until he reached the Camp 4 entrance path. Then I went back to my cave and found my sheath knife. I ran cordelette through the belt loop and tied it so the knife hung behind my right hip.

  I moved out of the Bachar Cracker cave. I took my sleeping bag and gear further up on the north side to a lean-to of gray boulders, not even rainproof. But the sky was clear, and I slept near the bear hollows.

  • • •

  “Not to anybody, right?”

  “Right,” Kenny said.

  “I know you wouldn’t brag about it.”

  “No,” he said. “I thought it was funny, but I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Good.”

  Kenny and I walked into Curry, around the back of the shower building. It was early morning, before anyone was up. Kenny said, “My parents probably wanted something different for my life. I’m thirty-one now.” We got to the lost-and-found boxes. Most of the things I owned were from those boxes.

  “Look at this puffy.” Kenny held up a bright orange jacket, waiting on top of the first box, clean and bright compared to the one he normally wore.

  “That’ll work,” I said. I pulled out a pair of long underwear and smelled them. They were rank, but I could wash them in the free showers with the pump soap.