The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
“Tell them Hayduke’s back,” Hayduke said. “That’ll calm them down.” He tossed his beer can out the window. And opened another. Bonnie studied him.
“I thought we were only going to litter paved roads,” she said. “This is not a paved road, in case your eyes are too bloodshot to notice.”
“Fuck off.” He tossed the little metal tab out the window.
“That’s a brilliant retort you’ve worked out, Hayduke,” she said. “Really brilliant. A real flash of wit for all occasions.”
“Fuck off.”
“Touché. Doc, are you going to sit there like a lump of lard and let that hairy swine insult me?”
“Well … yes,” Doc said, after due consideration.
“You better. I’m a full-grown woman, and I can take care of myself.”
Hayduke, by the window, gazed out at the scenery, that routine canyon country landscape—grandiose, desolate, shamelessly spectacular. Among those faraway buttes and pinnacles, rosy red against the sky, lay the promise of something intimate—the intimate in the remote. A secret and a revelation. Later, he thought, we’ll get into all that.
They came to Fry Canyon, which consists of a slot in the bedrock ten feet wide and fifty feet deep, crossed by an old wooden bridge; a cinder-block warehouse, which functions as Fry Canyon’s store, gas station, post office and 3.2 social center; and a bulldozed airstrip, cobbled with rocks, stippled with cow dung, on which waited one Cessna four-seater—Fry Canyon Airport.
Smith drove past the limp wind sock dangling from a pole straight to the wing of the aircraft and stopped. As he unloaded passengers and baggage, the pilot came out of the store drinking Coke from a can. Within five minutes all kisses (Smith and Bonnie), handshakes, embraces and farewells were completed and Dr. Sarvis and Ms. Abbzug, airborne once again, were winging their course southeast toward New Mexico and home.
Hayduke and Smith restocked the beer chest and drove on, sunward, downward, riverward, upwind, into the red-rock rimrock country of the Colorado River, heart of the heart of the American West. Where the wind always blows and nothing grows but stunted juniper on the edge of a canyon, scattered blackbrush, scrubby cactus. After the winter rains, if any, and again after the summer rains, if any, there will be a brief flourish of flowers, ephemeral things. The average annual rainfall comes to five inches. It is the kind of land to cause horror and repugnance in the heart of the dirt farmer, stock raiser, land developer. There is no water; there is no soil; there is no grass; there are no trees except a few brave cottonwoods deep in the canyons. Nothing but skeleton rock, the skin of sand and dust, the silence, the space, the mountains beyond.
Hayduke and Smith, jouncing down into the red desert, passed without stopping (for Smith could not bear the memories) the turnoff to the old road which formerly had led to the hamlet of Hite (not to be confused with Hite Marina). Hite, once home for Seldom Seen and still official headquarters of his business, now lies underwater.
They drove on, coming presently to the new bridge that spanned the gorge of White Canyon, the first of the three new bridges in the area. Three bridges to cross one river?
Consult the map. When Glen Canyon Dam plugged the Colorado, the waters backed up over Hite, over the ferry and into thirty miles of canyon upstream from the ferry. The best place to bridge the river (now Lake Powell) was upstream at Narrow Canyon. In order to reach the Narrow Canyon bridge site it was necessary to bridge White Canyon on the east and Dirty Devil Canyon on the west. Thus, three bridges.
Hayduke and Smith stopped to inspect the White Canyon bridge. This, like the other two, was of arch construction and massive proportion, meant to last. The very bolt heads in the cross members were the size of a man’s fist.
George Hayduke crawled about for a few minutes underneath the abutments, where nomads already, despite the newness of the bridge, had left their signatures with spray paint on the pale concrete and their dung, dried and shriveled, in the dust. He came up shaking his head.
“Don’t know,” he says, “don’t know. It’s one big motherfucker.”
“The middle one’s bigger,” says Smith.
They stared down over the railing at the meandering trickle, two hundred feet below, of White Canyon’s intermittent, strictly seasonal stream. Their beer cans sailed light as Dixie cups into the gloom of the gorge. The first flood of the summer would flush them, along with all other such detritus, down to the storage reservoir, Lake Powell, where all upstream garbage found a fitting resting-place.
On to the middle bridge.
They were descending, going down, yet so vast is the scale of things here, so complex the terrain, that neither river nor central canyon become visible until the traveler is almost on the rim of the canyon.
They saw the bridge first, a high lovely twin arch rising in silvery steel well above the level of its roadway. Then they could see the stratified walls of Narrow Canyon. Smith parked his truck; they got out and walked onto the bridge.
The first thing they noticed was that the river was no longer there. Somebody had removed the Colorado River. This was old news to Smith, but to Hayduke, who knew of it only by hearsay, the discovery that the river was indeed gone came as a jolt. Instead of a river he looked down on a motionless body of murky green effluent, dead, stagnant, dull, a scum of oil floating on the surface. On the canyon walls a coating of dried silt and mineral salts, like a bathtub ring, recorded high-water mark. Lake Powell: storage pond, silt trap, evaporation tank and garbage dispose-all, a 180-mile-long incipient sewage lagoon.
They stared down. A few dead fish floated belly up on the oily surface among the orange peels and picnic plates. One waterlogged tree, a hazard to navigation, hung suspended in the static medium. The smell of decay, faint but unmistakable, rose four hundred and fifty feet to their nostrils. Somewhere below that still surface, down where the cloudy silt was settling out, the drowned cottonwoods must yet be standing, their dead branches thick with algae, their ancient knees laden with mud. Somewhere under the heavy burden of water going nowhere, under the silence, the old rocks of the river channel waited for the promised resurrection. Promised by whom? Promised by Capt. Joseph “Seldom Seen” Smith; by Sgt. George Washington Hayduke; by Dr. Sarvis and Ms. Bonnie Abbzug, that’s whom.
But how?
Hayduke climbed down the rocks and inspected the foundations of the bridge: very concrete. Abutments sunk deep into the sandstone wall of the canyon, huge I beams bolted together with bolts the size of a man’s arm, nuts big as dinner plates. If a man had a wrench with a 14-inch head, thinks Hayduke, and a handle like a 20-foot crowbar, he might get some leverage on those nuts.
They drove on to the third bridge, over the now-submerged mouth of the Dirty Devil River. On the way they passed an unmarked dirt road, the jeep trail leading north toward the Maze, Land of Standing Rocks, the Fins, Lizard Rock and Land’s End. No-man’s land. Smith knew it well.
The third bridge, like the others, was of arch construction, all steel and concrete, built to bear the weight of forty-ton haulers loaded with carnotite, pitchblende, bentonite, bituminous coal, diatomaceous earth, sulfuric acid, Schlumberger’s drill mud, copper ore, oil shale, sand tar, whatever might yet be extracted from the wilderness.
“We’re going to need a carload of H.E.,” says George Hayduke. “Not like them old wooden truss and trestle bridges over in ‘Nam.”
“Well, hell, who says we have to blow all three?” Smith says. “If we take out any one it will cut the road.”
“Symmetry,” says Hayduke. “A nice neat job on all three would be more appreciated. I don’t know. Let’s think about it. Do you see what I see?”
Leaning on the rail of the Dirty Devil bridge, they looked south to Hite Marina, where a few cabin cruisers floated at their moorings, and at something more interesting closer by, the Hite airstrip, which appeared to be undergoing expansion. They saw a quarter mile of cleared land, a pickup truck, a wheeled loader, a dump truck and, coming to a halt, a Caterpillar D-7 b
“I see it,” Smith said at last, reluctantly.
Even as they watched, the dozer operator was getting off the machine, getting into the pickup and driving down to the marina. Lunchtime again.
“Seldom,” says Hayduke, “that guy shut off the engine but he sure as hell didn’t remove anything.”
“No?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Well …”
“Seldom, I want you to give me a lesson in equipment operation.”
“Not here.”
“Right here.”
“Not in broad daylight.”
“Why not?”
Smith seeks an excuse. “Not with them motorboaters hangin’ around the marina.”
“They couldn’t care less. We’ll have our hard hats and your pickup truck, and people will think we’re construction workers.”
“You ain’t supposed to make a big wake near the boat docks.”
“It’ll make one fine helluva splash, won’t it?”
“We can’t do it.”
“It’s a matter of honor.”
Smith thinking, reflecting, meditating. Finally the deep creases shifted position, his leathery face relaxed into a smile.
“One thing first,” he says.
“What’s that?”
“We take the license plates off my truck.”
Done.
“Let’s go,” says Smith.
The road wound about the heads of side canyons, rose, descended, rose again to the mesa above the marina. They turned off and drove out on the airstrip. Nobody around. Down at the marina, half a mile away, a few tourists, anglers and boaters lounged in the shade. The Cat operator’s pickup stood parked in front of the café. Heat waves shimmered above the walls of red rock. Except for the purr of a motorboat far down the lake, the world was silent, drugged with heat.
Smith drove straight to the side of the bulldozer, a middle-aged dust-covered iron beast. He shut off his engine and stared at Hayduke.
“I’m ready,” says Hayduke.
They put on their hard hats and got out.
“First we start the starting engine, right?” Hayduke says. “To warm up the diesel engine, right?”
“Wrong. It’s warmed up for us already. First we check the controls to make sure the tractor is in correct starting position.”
Smith climbed into the operator’s seat, facing an array of levers and pedals. “This,” he said, “is the flywheel clutch lever. Disengage.” He pushed it forward. “This here is the speed selector lever. Put in neutral.”
Hayduke watched closely, memorizing each detail. “That’s the throttle,” he said.
“That’s right. This is the forward and reverse lever. It should be in neutral too. This is the governor control lever. Push forward all the way. Now we apply the right steering brake”—Smith stepped on the right pedal—“and we lock it in position.” He flipped forward a small lever on the floorboards. “Now—”
“So everything’s in neutral and the brake is locked and it can’t go anywhere?”
“That’s right. Now”—Smith got out of the seat and moved to the port side of the engine—“now we start the starting engine. The new tractors are a lot simpler, they don’t need a starting engine, but you’ll find plenty of these old ones still around. These big tractors will last for fifty years if they’re taken good care of. Now this here little lever is called the transmission control lever. It goes in HIGH SPEED position for starting. This is the compression release lever; we put it in START position. Now we disengage the starting-engine clutch with this handle here.” He pushed the lever in toward the diesel block.
“Oh, Jesus,” mutters Hayduke.
“Yep, it’s a little complicated. Now … where was I? Now we open the fuel valve by unscrewing this little valve, right … here. Now we pull out the choke. Now we set the idling latch in position. Now we turn on the switch.”
“That’s the ignition switch for the starting engine?”
“Yep.” Smith turned on the switch. Sound of a positive click. Nothing else.
“Nothing happened,” Hayduke says.
“Oh, I reckon something happened,” Smith said. “We closed a circuit. Now if this was a fairly old-model tractor the next thing you’d have to do is get the crank and crank up the engine. But this model has an electric starter. Let’s see if she works.” Smith put his hand on a lever under the clutch handle and pushed it back. The engine growled, turned over, caught fire. Smith released the starter lever, adjusted the choke; the engine ran smoothly.
“That’s only the gasoline engine,” Hayduke said. “We still have to get the diesel started, right?”
“That’s right, George. Anybody coming?”
Hayduke climbed to the driver’s seat. “Nobody in sight.”
“All right.” The starting engine was warm; Smith closed the choke. The engine throbbed at a comfortable idling speed. “Okay, now we grab these two levers here.” Hayduke watching again, all attention. “This upper one is the pinion control and the lower one is the clutch control. Now we push the clutch lever all the way in”—toward the diesel engine block—“and pull the pinion lever all the way out. Now we move the idle latch to let the starting engine run at full speed. Now we engage the starting-engine clutch.” He pulled the clutch lever out. The engine slowed, almost stalled, then picked up speed. He moved the compression release lever to RUN position. “Now the starting engine is cranking the diesel engine against compression,” Smith said, shouting above the roar of the meshing motors. “It’ll start right off.”
Hayduke nodded but was no longer sure he followed it all. The tractor was making a great noise; black smoke jetted up, making the hinged lid dance on top of the exhaust stack.
“Now the diesel is running,” Smith shouted, looking at the exhaust smoke with approval. He came back to the operator’s seat, beside Hayduke. “So now we give it more speed. Pull the governor back to half speed. Now we’re about ready to go,” he shouted. “So we shut off the starting engine.”
He moved forward again and disengaged the starting engine clutch, closed the fuel valve, shut off the ignition switch and returned to Hayduke. They sat side by side on the wide leather-covered operator’s seat.
“Now we’re ready to drive this thing,” he shouted, grinning at Hayduke. “You still interested or would you rather go drink a beer?”
“Let’s go,” Hayduke shouts back. He scanned the road and marina again for any sign of hostile activity. All seemed to be in order.
“Okay,” shouted Smith. He pulled a lever, lifting the hydraulic dozer blade a foot off the ground. “Now we select our operating speed. We have five speeds forward, four in reverse. Since you’re kind of a beginner and that cliff is only a hundred yards away we’ll stick to the slowest speed for right now.” The tractor faced toward the big drop-off. He shifted the speed selector from neutral into first, pulled the forward-and-reverse lever back to the forward position. Nothing happened.
“Nothing’s happening,” says Hayduke, nervous again.
“That’s right and ain’t supposed to neither,” says Smith. “Keep your shirt on. Now we rev up the engine a bit.” He pulled the throttle back to full speed. “Now we engage the flywheel clutch.” He pulled the clutch lever back; the great tractor started to tremble as the transmission gears slid into meshing position. He pulled the clutch lever all the way back and snapped it over center. At once the tractor began to move—thirty-five tons of iron bearing east toward St. Louis, Mo., via Lake Powell and Narrow Canyon.
“I reckon I’ll get off now,” Smith said, standing up.
“Wait a minute,” Hayduke shouts. “How do you steer it?”
“Steering too, huh? Okay, you use these two levers in the middle. T
“I get it,” shouted Hayduke happily. “Let me do it.”
Smith got up, letting Hayduke take over. “You sure you understand the whole thing?” he said.
“Don’t bother me, I’m busy,” Hayduke shouted, big grin shining through his shaggy beard.
“All right.” Smith stepped from the fender to the drawbar of the slow-moving machine and jumped lightly to the ground. “You be careful now,” he shouted.
Hayduke didn’t hear him. Playing with clutch levers and clutch brakes he wove a crazy course toward the loading machine at the side of the airstrip. At the rate of two miles per hour the bulldozer smashed into the loader, a great mass of metal colliding with a lesser mass. The loader yielded, sliding sideways over the ground. Hayduke steered toward the edge of the runway and the plunge beyond, pushing the loader ahead. He grinned ferociously. Dust clouds billowed above the grind, the crunch, the squeal and groan of steel under stress.
Smith got into his pickup and started the motor, ready to take off at the first hint of danger. Despite the uproar there seemed to be no sign of alarm in any quarter. The yellow pickup remained at the café. Down at the marina a boater refueled his runabout. Two boys fished for channel cat from the end of the dock. Tourists picked over trinkets in the curio shop. A pair of hawks soared high above the radiant cliffs. Peace….