High Plains Tango (24 page)

“There were several months there when the little T-hawks appeared to be a severe roadblock, in a manner of speaking, and caused considerable hand-wringing in all the papers. Various creative solutions were hatched over beer at Leroy’s. Several of the boys said there weren’t many of the birds anyway and about ten minutes of shotgunning could turn an endangered species into an extinct species, in which case it wouldn’t be endangered anymore. There was a certain logic to that, I had to admit. But there was also the risk of about twenty years in jail and a fifty-thousand-dollar fine, which sort of cooled things off.

“Instead, they got some bumper stickers printed up that read,
MY FAVORITE BREAKFAST? FRIED T-HAWK.
That sort of mindless poop appeals to people without minds, so pretty soon almost everybody in Salamander had one of the stickers on their cars and store windows. Fellow named Ray Dargen pasted one on the door of Danny’s, but Thelma scraped it off that night with a razor blade.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Moore got quieted down pronto when the president of his little college said the highway was clearly in the best interest of the school and that Mr. Moore’s support of the highway clearly was in Mr. Moore’s own best interest. Moore, however, was a gritty fella and hung in there behind the scenes for the duration with Carlisle.

“Things got pretty dicey. Word was that funding for the highway was getting shaky, and that only increased the level of frustration with those opposing the road. Eventually, our congressfolks said they’d support oil drilling on the continental shelf near Santa Barbara, California, in exchange for voting on a bill that somehow or another exempted the T-hawks from protection, which was made easier by the fact that two other pairs of hawks had recently been found in locations southwest of here. Bird lovers testified in Washington, D.C., that the additional T-hawk habitats were also being destroyed and that it was vital to preserve the Yerkes County site. You could hear ’em scream from here to the White House, but it didn’t do ’em any good, and truth went marching on.

“At first, some of the local ranchers and farmers who objected to the road cutting through their land were on Carlisle’s side, though they admitted to being a little uncomfortable aligned with radical environmental causes. More than that, they were afraid the locals would start calling them
‘T-bird,’
which is what Carlisle was being called behind his back.

“Axel Looker led this group opposed to the highway going near or through their land. But when Axel saw the money being offered for his property, he sat down and did some figuring, ‘penciled it out,’ as the boys around here like to say. The generous offer would allow him and Earlene to retire in Florida, which they’d been wanting to do for some time. When Axel withdrew his opposition, the coalition folded. Axel also let it be known that he would no longer scoop out Carlisle’s lane in the winter.

“It’d be unfair to imply that Carlisle was completely by himself in this, though it was pretty near to that. One ranch couple in particular, Marcie and Claude English, hung in there with him. But they were kind of outcasts anyhow, since they were deep into something called ‘holistic resource management,’ which they claimed would restore and preserve the grass out here for decades more of grazing. For those raised on Genesis and its reassurance that we humans are to have dominance over everything God created, that all sounded like something a little to the left of Satan. Besides, the idea was thought up by a fellow from Africa, and everybody knew Africa wasn’t doing well. But Claude and Marcie were kind enough to have Carlisle over for dinner a number of times during all of this and refused to budge, forcing the government eventually to use assorted legal atrocities on ’em.

“Carlisle and his buddies held up progress on the road for several months, but their options were steadily declining. And I knew the final public hearing over at the Livermore High School gym would be worth attending to see if Carlisle had anything else left in his arsenal. So I’d been fishing around with Claude English—groveling, as a matter of fact—and he offered to take me the following Tuesday evening.

“I’d guessed it was going to be a real shootout and thought about wearing my old army helmet, just for fun. But I was afraid the great business minds trying to turn Lester’s into a trap for all the tourists supposed to blow into Salamander, following the concrete trail we’d lay for them, would use mental incompetence as grounds for my eviction.

“In that case, my worst fear was they’d send me out to the Yerkes County Care Facility, which Bobby Eakins called ‘the Boweling Alley.’ So I decided to remain as inconspicuous as possible.

“Claude and Marcie picked me up the evening of the highway hearing. Susanna Benteen went with us. That was kind of fun, since I’d never been close up to her, let alone talked at all with her. She was real nice, asked me a lot of questions about my life and times, laughed real genuine when I tried to get off a little joke or two.

“She wasn’t at all distant like I thought she’d be, and it gave even an old guy like me goose bumps just to be riding along in the same car with her. Something kind of haunting about her, like she’d seen about everything there was to see. And, of course, she was just plain fun to look at, like a good painting or something, and I got to wishing I were a little younger. Did that just for a moment, then settled back and enjoyed the ride on a crisp February evening.”

I could see the old man was a little tired from all the talking and suggested we take a recess until the following day, giving me time to transcribe my notes. Around eight o’clock the next evening, I met him again and bought a beer for myself and whiskey for him.

“Where was I?” he asked when we had settled in a booth.

“You, Susanna Benteen, and Marcie and Claude English were on your way to Livermore for the public meeting.”

He nodded, took a sip of whiskey, and got his thoughts organized.

“Well, picking up where I left off, the Livermore gym was hot and didn’t smell too good. Radiators hissing, people fanning themselves. Bowing to public demand, the school janitor opened the side doors, letting a breath of fresh air into the place. But those sitting near the doors started complaining about the draft, so he closed them again, leaving all three hundred and fifty of us to breathe a recirculating swirl of greed, hostility toward Carlisle McMillan, and old jockstraps.

“The ground rules for the meeting were as stifling as the air in the Livermore gym. Each person was given an allotted speaking time of ninety seconds and could rise only once, thus curtailing honest discussion of any kind.

“Things got started with a statement read by one R. M. ‘Highway Bob’ Hawkins, who took a sip of water and then introduced himself as executive vice president of the state’s Associated General Contractors. He pointed out that for each dollar spent on construction, a spin-off of two seventy would be generated by something he called the multiplier effect. He also said that for every one million spent on road construction, sixty-seven workers would be put on various payrolls, meaning that something in the neighborhood of about forty-five hundred jobs would be created in the state by just the construction activity itself. He finished up by saying, ‘There’s no question that the great driving machine of our economy is construction. It’s the real pump primer that gets those waves of economic benefits rolling.’

“At that point, Claude English rose and said that if construction generated so many good things, why didn’t the state just build a bunch of pyramids and solve everybody’s problems? A good part of the audience laughed, even though they all knew Claude didn’t have his thoughts together on the highway project. Still, he was one of them, had been for a long time, and a little joke was all right. The moderator rapped his gavel and called for order.

“Following Highway Bob’s chest thumping and Claude’s comment, the audience was treated to statements supporting the highway by the Falls City Chamber of Commerce, the Yerkes County Development Authority, the Livermore Boosters Club, the Farm Bureau, and the High Plains Development Corporation. Bill Flanigan of HPDC looked serious when he said that his group had carefully weighed all things pro and con about the project before coming down in favor of the road passing through Yerkes County, also noting there just weren’t many cons to be found, if any.

“Marcie English then got to her feet and tossed up a nice soft one for the experts to shoot down. Her voice was a little shaky, not being used to speaking in public and all, and her main argument had to do with preserving the family farm and not taking land for road construction. The moderator smiled and thanked her for her input, as he called it, reminding her the Farm Bureau was in favor of the road, and looked around the room for the next pigeon.

“There was silence for a few seconds. Then Carlisle McMillan, looking awfully tired from trying to fight the highway and earn a living all at the same time, stood up, stated his name as required, and got his endgame under way. He simply asked the experts to prove the selected route was the best one based on the criteria they had listed in volume twelve of the report. He’d acquired a copy of the report, all fifteen volumes of it, and had spent a lot of time reading and calculating, using instructions supplied by a Stanford professor, he later said.

“The moderator, a public relations specialist from the State Highway Department, gave Carlisle a condescending smile and said the selection involved sophisticated mathematics, implying Carlisle should sit down and be a good boy because the figuring was way over his head.

“Carlisle, showing no signs of discomfort, replied, ‘I think I’m capable of understanding the calculations, and I’d like to see them demonstrated.’

“That set everybody off jibbering and booing Carlisle. See, most folks don’t even like the word
mathematics.
The very mention of it usually is enough to cause a run for the exits by the general public. So when Carlisle stood his ground and asked for proof, there was a lot of mumbling about his gall and how they all wished he’d go back to California, where smart-asses who understood mathematics belonged in the first place.

“Things got more interesting at that point. The moderator conferred privately with Dr. Wendell Hammer, chief brownshirt for the propeller heads. After that, the moderator, red in the face and stuttering a little, said that the person who’d done the calculations wasn’t in attendance that evening. Carlisle said that wasn’t his cart to haul and suggested that certainly others present were capable of showing why the proposed route was best, given they were so strongly in favor of it. More huddling up front. Over in the amen corner, the local leaders were highly agitated.

“Dr. Hammer got pushed to the forefront of things and tried to smoke it by Carlisle with a bunch of technical gibberish involving stuff with names such as ‘social utility functions’ and ‘discount rates.’ Carlisle took it all in and said his personal calculations conclusively proved that another route forty miles to the west was the best one, based on the criteria presented in the report itself, and that he’d be happy to demonstrate that fact. He also said, and I wrote this down pretty much word for word: ‘The discount rate used in this study is far below the true cost of capital for the project. I’d appreciate knowing how you chose the rate you used. It’s not realistic, and anything approaching a realistic figure will produce a benefit-cost ratio favoring the western route even more. Furthermore, I can prove the western route is better even using the crummy numbers you experts have put in for the discount rate.’ ”

The old man chuckled. “To those in attendance, this conversation between the good Dr. Hammer and Carlisle was like a battle between androids employing light swords and ray guns. Nobody had any idea what the two of them were talking about, including me, ’specially when Carlisle used the word
sophistry
as part of his criticisms. Besides, everyone already knew the proposed route was best since it included Livermore and Falls City, and why all the fuss over an extra fifty million dollars in construction costs anyway? Somebody else, the nation’s taxpayers, was footing the bill for that.

“The moderator tried to invoke the meeting rules on Carlisle, saying, ‘I think maybe we’ve heard more than enough from you, Mr. McMillan,’ at which point the crowd applauded.

“Carlisle was not moved by meeting rules. He said, ‘My questions have not been answered, and I have a right as a taxpaying citizen of Yerkes County to have them answered.’

“Now it’s important to understand that the majority of the crowd were Yerkes County taxpayers, and then there was an outsider, Carlisle, who just happened to be a taxpayer, and somehow there was a difference. People began to shout at Carlisle to sit down and shut up, and things were at the point of getting out of control. Some folks were putting on their coats and walking toward the door, shaking their heads at all the stupidity.

“Carlisle obviously had Dr. Wendell Hammer bolted to the wall defending something he wasn’t sure of in the first place. The good Dr. Hammer tried to recover by giving us all an earful of mouth and ran around Carlisle’s questions twenty-seven times before melting into a pool of butter. After more clustering up front, the moderator declared the meeting suspended and said it’d be continued the following week when additional mathematical specialists and their capitalist running dogs would be flown in from Vienna to testify in favor of the proposed route.

“It was a long week for everyone, especially Carlisle. The newspapers pounded away at the need for economic development and how the highway was a crucial link in those plans. Bill Flanigan put out a statement saying that the highway would ensure sustained economic development in the state for the next twenty-five years.

“On the Wednesday following the meeting, a young T-hawk with a twenty-two-caliber bullet hole in its chest and wire wrapped around its neck was found hanging from a streetlight in front of the Salamander Post Office. Stapled to its right wing was a note scribbled in crayon on a piece of butcher paper:
‘IT’S THESE TWEETIES OR US!’
The
Inquirer
printed a photo of the dead hawk swinging in the winter breeze and ran an editorial condemning the action and pleading for calm and good sense, neither of which was to be found anywhere in Yerkes County.