High Plains Tango (18 page)

Carlisle and Moore were interested in purchasing the parcel of land where the T-hawk forest was located. As it turned out, the federal government owned the land and was not interested in selling, since most of it was leased for grazing rights. But things were quiet, and the T-hawks seemed happy, so Moore and Carlisle shut down their efforts at that point. Moore, however, began working with the Raptor Coalition to get the T-hawks on the endangered species list.

Ornithologists reasoned that if one pair of T-hawks was still in existence, there might be more. After an intensive search, two more pairs were discovered at locations within a hundred miles of Yerkes County. That was all, six adults and their young, a total of fifteen birds. The survival of the little hawks was a tenuous ride on the back of a dragonfly.

Carlisle was a happy man. He had Gally and useful work to do. He had Timmerman hawks overhead, Dumptruck on the porch railing, and songs to sing. Plus, to be honest, he still had thoughts about Susanna Benteen from time to time. It was the way of all men. And Susanna Benteen clearly was a woman worth thinking about. In working together on the layout and content of his greenhouse, she and Gally had become friends. Sometimes in a summer dusk, he would come home from working in Falls City and find them in his hot tub out on the deck, drinking wine and mildly annoying Dumptruck by their very presence.

When it came to Susanna being naked, Carlisle averted his eyes more out of self-preservation than propriety. Those feelings about her had never left him since that night a year earlier, when she and the Indian had shooed away whatever evil spirits might be lurking in his house and replaced them with good ones. Gally was one thing, Susanna something quite different. Not better, he told himself, different. Just for an instant, he’d catch Susanna watching him. When their eyes met, however, he turned away.

Later, Susanna and Gally would appear on the front porch, dressed, looking poached and cheerful. Susanna would always ask Carlisle to sing “Whippoorwill John,” and he’d get out his banjo and muster up his wavery baritone: “Whippoorwill John, he runs like a moon through the canyonlands  .  .  .” Often the Indian would appear out of the twilight, and the four of them would sit there watching the T-hawks and Dumptruck as he made his evening rounds of the property, letting the night kind of settle in on its own terms.

Carlisle was fascinated with the stories and legends surrounding Wolf Butte. On a rainy day in late summer, just before she left for Spearfish, he and Gally had parked the truck and walked across grassland toward the butte, which sat about a mile off the road. It was a day very much like the one when he’d first arrived in Yerkes County, cold rain and low clouds moving across the face of the butte.

“Where are the burial mounds?” Carlisle asked.

“I think they’re around on the other side.” Gally pulled the hood of her rain jacket over her head and shivered. “Carlisle, this place gives me the creeps. It’s pretty close to where Jack was killed, and that plays on my nerves, too.”

Carlisle looked up the wall of the butte. Thirty-two hundred feet above him was the crest. “Where did that professor fall?”

Gally was uneasy, ready to leave. “I know he was looking over the burial mounds and that he didn’t fall from Wolf Butte. On the other side and about a half mile farther northwest is a smaller butte, so that must have been the one.”

Carlisle wanted to walk around the butte and look at the mounds, but Gally would have none of it. “You go if you want, I’ll wait in the truck.”

“No, that’s okay. I’ll come back sometime by myself. I can understand why this place makes you jittery.”

“I’m not that superstitious ordinarily, but I think it’s a real strange coincidence that all those people, including Jack, have died out here and the way those old stories about this place seem to stick in people’s minds. And that stuff about a priestess called Syawla and something or someone called the Keeper. It really makes my skin get crawly when I think about it.”

They took a different route back to the truck and passed a sign bolted to a metal post facing the road:
PROPERTY OF A
u
RA CORPORATION, KEEP OUT.

Carlisle studied the sign. “Kind of an odd name for a company, don’t you think?”

“Yes. Just like everything else in this place.”

The rain turned to a light mist, and Carlisle let the wipers run one sweep across the windshield before shutting them off. He looked again at the butte. It was shrouded in a combination of mist and foggy clouds moving around and over the face and crest, but he could still see the fuzzy outlines of it.

“Gally, did you see that?”

“What?”

“I thought I saw someone or something moving on top of the butte.” He got out of the truck and stood for a moment, resting his arms on the open door. “I’m sure I saw something up there. Suppose it’s the Keeper?”

“Come on, Carlisle, let’s go. I really want to get out of here.”

They were too far away to hear the sound of a flute coming from the crest of the butte, but if the weather had been clear, they might have seen a woman dancing there.

Chapter Thirteen

A
FTER HIS OPEN HOUSE, CARLISLE’S PHONE BEGAN TO RING.
It rang two, three times a day. A school superintendent in Livermore wanted an addition to his present house, in Falls City a surgeon’s wife wanted a new kitchen, and a biochemist wanted an entire home built. Cody’s Way: (1) Do good work at a reasonable price and you never will want for work. (2) Be selective when you can; if your work is good enough, they will wait for you.

With Gally away at college and his own house completed, Carlisle began to follow the carpenter’s trade in the fashion Cody had trained him and wondered again how he had ever strayed from that path. But he knew: the lure of the short run, always that. He was politely selective, accepting projects he could do himself or with a bit of extra muscle he hired on a day-labor basis, driving his truck along the roads of Yerkes County with his tools neatly stowed and his dreams nearly so.

Carlisle McMillan was content, spelled lowercase and good enough left that way, a swagman come to rest. If something approaching ecstasy were not in the cards, then contentment would do. That’s exactly what he was thinking on a January evening when Susanna, the Indian, Dumptruck, and he crunched through the snow around the pond and wondered how the bluegills were faring beneath the ice.

Three days later, the plans for a new interstate highway were announced.

The old man from above Lester’s was sitting at his usual stool when Carlisle came into Danny’s. He shoved a copy of the
Inquirer
along the counter toward Carlisle and said, “Mr. McMillan, I think you better take a look at this.”

Carlisle stared at the six-column scream passing for a headline:
AVENUE OF THE HIGH PLAINS PROPOSED.
He flipped to the maps on the second and third pages, running his index finger along the route. The road came slanting northwest out of New Orleans and formed a quavering diagonal all the way to Calgary, Alberta. The quavers obviously were necessary to include Little Rock, Kansas City, and Omaha. The
Inquirer
had gone all out in its graphics, showing in exquisite detail just how the three-hundred-yard-wide strip of four lanes plus a grass median would traverse the state.

The route made a wide swing to include Falls City and Livermore, missed Salamander by six miles, and flowed relentlessly right up the county road in front of Carlisle’s place, right through Carlisle’s property, right through the little forest of T-hawks, before bending northwest and crossing the middle of Gally’s land. Other customers were watching Carlisle, watching disbelief and anger fighting for control of his face.

“Carlisle, take the paper with you if you want.” Thelma Englestrom was not smiling when she said it.

He spent all day studying the maps, reading the four accompanying articles, and thinking. The road featured a sharp and apparently unnecessary curve southeast of Falls City, allowing it to pass close to there and Livermore. That made him suspicious, which made him even angrier. He had seen this crap before, all over California. Somebody had diddled the route, and where there was diddling, there was money involved.

What Carlisle had not seen in his previous experience with highways was how fast they were going to move on this project. Tentative bids were already being let to contractors in six states plus Canada. The first round of public hearings was scheduled to begin in two months, where comments about the proposed route would be discussed. Given the condition of the high plains, with its industry and soil both eroding and its water about gone, something had to be done and done pronto. That was the official party line.

Pork was floating in the barrel right up to the brim, something for everybody. United States senators and representatives were swelled up over the economic benefits the road construction itself would bring to their districts. In addition, oil could be piped from the Arctic to Calgary and shipped from there to New Orleans refineries by truck, taking up slack caused by a decline in the Texas and Gulf fields. So truckers and oil companies and New Orleans would gain.

As with the sea islands connivance and its arithmetic of woe, this project had its own self-reinforcing elements. Approval had not yet been given for drilling the Arctic, but how could that proposal be refused now, given all the money that would be spent on a highway to haul the oil? And if the Arctic was to be pillaged, the oil must somehow be delivered. Therefore the highway was essential.

That last piece of genius collared support from the drillers, makers of drilling equipment, truck manufacturers, and a range of other interests, including labor unions. But Carlisle suspected the Arctic drilling was really secondary. Highways, the idea of them, at least, had their own internal momentum, the vague idea that concrete invariably brings nirvana with it. Get a major highway through your state, and things will be just fine.

And a little sop had been thrown to the environmentalists. Part of the plan was a proposal to buy all of Axel Looker’s and Gally Deveraux’s properties. A new antelope and buffalo restoration project would be started there and eventually would be known as Antelope National Park. Something for everybody.

The governors of the lucky states were orgasmic, slathering their support for the highway across the newspaper pages, touting the incredible propellant to economic development it represented. As they saw it, tourism would flower, the small towns would be resurrected, the fat towns would get even fatter, population would rise, and so forth. The gleeful howls continued for page after page.

Carlisle read it all, then read it again, his gut sinking. Gally called from Spearfish that evening.

“Carlisle, I’m just sick about this highway affair. I’ve been pushing back the tears all day over what it’ll do to you. I talked to Thelma earlier, and she said everybody in town believes it’s the deliverance of Salamander.”

“Gally, I hate to tell you this, but Salamander is already dead and doesn’t know it. A bloody strip of concrete running six miles away isn’t going to mean squat to that town. If anything, it will just make it easier for the locals to drive to the shopping centers in Falls City. Thelma and others may want to believe that garbage, but it just isn’t true. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but this is just another rusty nail in the coffin of my dreams, and I’m sick of these bastards and their obvious intent to turn the entire world into a desert of concrete and baubles.”

Gally was silent for a moment and then spoke quietly, defensively. “This is real complicated, Carlisle. You can pick up your tools and go where the work is. A lot of us can’t do that, and we have to survive, too. I can’t pick up my land and move it, and I’m about a hairbreadth from bankruptcy court. Thelma can’t pick up Danny’s and move it. You can build another place, can’t you?”

“I can build another place. The T-hawks can’t.”

“But if it comes down to birds versus humans—”

He interrupted her. “I’ll say it again, Gally. The highway is not going to help Danny’s or Salamander. If it benefits anyone besides the contractors and cement industry and you—and Axel if he feels like selling, and he probably doesn’t have any choice—it will be the towns that already are doing well, plus Stuckey’s and Ramada and Texaco and all the rest of that crowd that’s bent on homogenizing the planet.”

“It’s the town’s only chance, Carlisle. What else is there?”

“If I were an expert on these things, there would be people lined up at my door from here to Yellowstone. I only know two things. First, the highway’s going to hurt Salamander more than it will help. Second, this project has got a bad smell to it. Behind all the trumpets, there’s some bad music playing. I can feel it in my gut, and it doesn’t have anything to do with bringing more customers into Danny’s.”

Across the road, T-hawks were coming in from their day’s work. The crickets were under way, the air was cooling, and Carlisle squinted west through a perfectly trimmed window, into pink orange afterglow.

“Gally, I admit I’ve got a bias about these things, but there’s something real artificial about what’s happening, not just in terms of this highway piece of crap, but all over the place. Highways, condos, bad construction that passes for new houses, fast-food-bad-food, shopping malls full of junk that nobody really needs, all that stuff. Capitalism has turned into trinketism, and we’re ruining this country.”

Carlisle was in full spate now, furious, angry at Gally, at the world. “Somebody’s convinced us that
more
is better, but nobody’s talking about more of
what
. Just
more
. More is better because less is worse, and the argument seems to end there. We think we know what we’re doing, but we seem to be outrunning the bounds of our ability to see what we’re doing, with no reckoning of long-term consequences. We need a Department of Forever, or something like that, people taking care of the long run. I don’t know, none of it makes any sense to me. All I do know is this country may have lost its capacity for outrage, but I haven’t. I can down bad porridge only so long, and I’m going to fight this highway on behalf of myself and the T-hawks, mostly for the birds.”

Again, Gally was silent; the line from Spearfish seemed to have been severed for a few seconds. Carlisle could hear her breathing, though, and she obviously was thinking, choosing her words.

“Carlisle, I don’t know what to say to you. I’m terribly sorry, truly I am, for what may happen to Cody’s monument. You’ve created an Eden for yourself, and I cry when I think of the highway coming through and destroying it. But I don’t have your anger about the way the world is going, and I’m not strong enough to change such things even if I did. I wish I were there so I could put my arms around you, but I have an examination tomorrow.”

“Well, at least the highway will solve your problem, Gally, getting your land sold. That’s something good that’ll come of this.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. There’s a professor at Stanford who is supposed to be a real warrior when it comes to these kinds of things. Saw an article about him in the alumni magazine last summer. Think I’ll call him.”

“I’ve got to go and study for my exam. Can you come down this weekend?”

“I don’t know. Frankly, I’m probably not a very good person to be around right now. So maybe it’s best I don’t. I’ll call if I change my mind.”

“Okay,” she said pensively. “I have plans for Saturday night, but I’ll cancel them if you decide to come down. Carlisle  .  .  .”

“Yes,” he responded, voice gruff and impatient, as if he had other things to do of more importance than talking to Gally Deveraux.

“I care a lot for you.”

Carlisle sighed, eased off. “I know you do, Gally, and I feel the same. Good luck on your exam.”