Point of Law (4 page)

Kim talks about how at one of the Tribe’s recent meetings at her house a window was shot out with a pellet gun. Tires on the numerous cars parked outside were slashed. Someone threw red paint on her front door, which she took as a threat to spill blood if necessary. Members of the Tribe received crank calls late at night. Some of them were verbally accosted by the developer’s local supporters in supermarkets, restaurants, and hardware stores.

“But we won’t let them scare us off,” she says grimly.

A chorus of “Right on!” comes primarily from the older portion of her audience. To me, though, there seems to be a lack of defiance in the voices. A meekness. I have the impression that many of them are very close to being scared off—maybe many of them have been already.

While she talks, I sit in the damp grass near the fire. I listen and take a polite pull on a bottle of rum when it’s passed to me. Like a good narcotics cop, I decline the occasional offer of a toke from a joint. Again I’m struck by the intense hatred Kim appears to bear for the developer, David Fast. Her lips are thin when she says his name and they pull away from her teeth in almost a snarl. It seems out of proportion to his simple greed and schoolboy bullying. I wouldn’t want to be on her shit list.

Her damaged face taut and passionate in the firelight, Kim goes on to discuss her strategy of legal and media-inspired challenges to the land exchange. Tomorrow they’ll have a rally, she explains. Two television crews, one local out of Durango and a second out of Denver, have both promised to send cameras. A rumor’s been going around that the developer, his timber and ranching employees, his investors, and his friends are going to try to interrupt it, but they can’t be allowed to stop the Tribe from getting their message out.

“Waste of time,” a voice says dismissively when she pauses. Every head turns to where the speaker is crouched in the dark grass.

I worry for a moment that Kim will explode. But instead she says evenly, “Okay, Cal. Tell us why you think it’s a waste of time.”

The skinny young man, the caver who’d earlier put his arms around Sunny, stands up. “’Cause that guy Fast is all sewn up with the politicians, the judges, everybody. His mom was a fucking
United States senator
.”

“So what do you propose? That we just give up?”

“We should fight ’em dirty, the way they fight us. Burn down that fucking lodge they’re building. Burn their trucks and tractors. Shit, we should burn that Fast guy’s house. Screw this media crap,” he says.

Kim appears unprovoked, as if she’s heard all this before. She calls for a show of hands—who wants to seek a legal solution instead of responding with harassment and violence? The vast majority of the activists around the fire raise their hands. Only a few, Sunny hesitantly among them, raise their hands when Kim asks in a half-joking tone, “Who wants to burn stuff?” Some of Cal’s young friends hoot and whistle with both hands in the air. As a peace officer and a man more than a little interested in Kim, I voted for her plan.

Cal is as calm as Kim had been a minute earlier. Still standing, he looks around at the activists and says, “There’s another way, too. Something I can’t tell you all about right now. But I’m working on it. It’s something big. Fucking huge.”

Kim isn’t able to keep the condescension out of her voice. “Cal, I’ve heard you talk about this big surprise before. If it’s for real, then let us know. Tell everyone about it.”

The young man looks into the fire and shakes his head. “I can’t. Not yet.”

“Then we’ll go with the vote and continue to pursue a media-based and legal means of stopping the development.”

She turns back to the group and explains how the rally scheduled for the next day will work. She instructs everyone to not react to the counter-protesters no matter what they say or do. Just ignore them—that’s the only effective way of dealing with them. She tells us that she asked the county sheriff in Tomichi to have a few deputies around but was rebuffed. The sheriff doubted there would be any trouble. Then Kim asks if anyone else wants to speak.

A few of the older activists stand up and detail the harassment they’ve received from the developer and Burgermeister, his hired gun. They complain about being jostled in Tomichi’s main grocery store, about the hang-ups late at night, about paint thrown on the walls of their own houses and cars, about threats from Fast himself that a local bank where he serves as a director will not be able to refinance their loans. They want sympathy for the deprivations they’ve had to endure by trying to save the valley. They want their suffering documented and recognized. They want it deemed excusable if they decide to bow out of the battle because of what it has already cost them. It’s clear to me that many of these people are afraid, although they still try to sound determined. And I think that Kim may have a problem keeping her Tribe together if this goes on much longer.

Kim tries to stir up their blood. She glares from face to face and says sharply, “Listen. It’s not over yet. This man and his plan are
evil
. He wants to destroy
all this
. And if we don’t fight David Fast, no one will. He’ll tear this place apart. But if we keep our courage, we can beat him.” She looks at Cal. “By using the law.”

I suppress a sardonic smile. Despite being a sworn peace officer, the law is not something I have a whole lot of faith in.

FOUR

A
FTER THE MEETING
ends, when quiet groups of activists begin to walk or stumble away in the dark toward their camps at the meadow’s fringe, I finally have a chance to speak with Kim alone. Sitting in the damp grass, I wait for their voices to fade until they’re just a background for the crickets. Somehow one of the bottles of rum the younger crowd had been passing around the fire has ended up in my lap. I take a final swig and contemplate Kim’s silhouette. She stands near the edge of the dying campfire’s glow, looking less tough than she had when speaking, looking even a little forlorn. Maybe the softening is just a trick of the light. She doesn’t smile as I walk up to her, but I am buoyed by the rum and the knowledge that she must want to talk to me, too, otherwise she would have walked off to the campsites with the others.

She starts just a little when I speak.

“Hi, Kim. I’m glad I came tonight. Thanks for inviting me.”

I stand next to her and watch the popping embers. She’s been studying them as if they were tea leaves that can tell the future. The only message I perceive in the coals is that this place is going to be destroyed, or maybe that we’re all going to burn in hell. I wouldn’t make a very optimistic fortune-teller. Especially not after a few too many pulls from a bottle of cheap rum.

“Thanks for coming.” Her voice is gentle and sad, not nearly as passionate as it had been a few minutes earlier. Maybe she’s getting the same message from the glowing coals. “I guess you couldn’t convince your father to join us.”

I shrug and repeat what I’d told Sunny, “He’s got a lot on his mind right now.” I don’t explain further and she doesn’t ask.

“Do you want any of this?” I offer her the bottle but she waves it away without taking her eyes off the fire.

“I don’t drink.”

We stand in silence. There’s a bark of laughter from a nearby campsite. A playful cry follows it. More laughter from a few more people, then once again the crickets take over with their pulsating rhythm. The heat from the smoldering logs is hot on my face, and the rum is warm in my belly. With my eyes half-closed against the smoke, my brain lazily wonders about the future of this valley that Kim and my father love so much.

“Who’s doing the legal work, moving to get the injunction and that sort of thing?” I ask, thinking I know some attorneys in Wyoming who might be able to help.

“I am.”

“You’re a lawyer?”

She nods, still staring into the embers. That’s a strike against her. Two, actually, with the not drinking, because I’d really like to see her loosen up. But my attraction remains undiminished.

“Your group, the Wild Fire Tribe—are they the only one protesting this thing?”

“Yes. It’s just us—me, a bunch of college kids, and some retirees.” Her voice is tired. “Not enough people know about this place. Even fewer care or are willing to take the time to do anything. Most of the people in town believe the development will bring them money from tourism. They don’t seem to understand that it will be a private, self-contained resort. It will be good for the construction business for a while. A few locals may get jobs waiting tables and cleaning bathrooms, but aside from the tax revenues, that’s about it. And as for the out-of-towners who come here to camp, bike, and climb, well, they can just go somewhere else like Moab or Durango. They don’t have the time or the interest to help save this place.”

Despite the fact that I’d shown up at the meeting, I feel as if I’m being reproved. Maybe for not having gotten involved sooner, when I’d first heard about the proposed swap in a climbing magazine. In any event, I feel guilty. “What do you think your chances are?”

“The law will be on our side if I can convince a federal judge that there was fraud with the environmental assessment.”

“You should be able to do it, right? Get that whistle-blower engineer to tell his story and subpoena the rest, make them testify under oath? Then a judge will grant a restraining order to keep the Forest Service from approving the swap?”

For the first time she looks straight at me. “You sound like you’ve had some legal training, too.” I see her lips quiver with the start of a smile, and I can read what she’s thinking but is too polite to say—
You sure as hell don’t look like a lawyer, so you must have been a defendant.
I touch my scarred cheek. I wish I’d shaved and not drunk so much wine and rum.

“I’ve had some experience with the law,” I say vaguely. I don’t want to tell her I’m a cop. Not yet. People tend to get defensive when I tell them what I do. It’s often better to be thought of as a criminal. I change the subject back to the valley. “Are you going to have Fast’s engineers subpoenaed for your hearing?”

“I wish it were that easy. I can’t even request a hearing for a TRO—that’s a temporary restraining order—until the Forest Service Supervisor, who’s an old friend of the Fast family by the way, has approved the exchange. And my whistle-blower’s been sent to India by his company. The others are all over the country. I’ve tried to interview them on the phone but they very politely tell me to fuck off.”

The word “fuck” sounds particularly harsh coming from her lips. She’s becoming animated again, and angry. “To tell the truth, things look bad. But I couldn’t tell them that,” she says with a gesture toward the camps. “I’m left with very little evidence, just some hearsay really, to convince the judge to grant me an injunction and the right to continue the suit and then subpoena all the guys who did the assessment for Fast.”

“You should see them in person. Appeal to them, threaten them. Now, before the hearing. From what I’ve seen, you can be very persuasive.” I admire her fierce, pretty features in the shifting light. Her single eye is a hot orange in the reflected glow of the embers.

“If I had the money, I’d do it. But this group of mine doesn’t exactly look wealthy, does it?”

No, they didn’t. They looked like a combination of broke-ass college students and octogenarians eking out a retirement on their social security checks. “What about other environmental groups? Can’t they help?”

She shakes her head and laughs again in that humorless way. “Most of the big ones fell for the scam, and now they’re too embarrassed to admit it. And the smaller ones have their own troubles.”

“I’ve seen bigger groups of protesters show up to complain about the paving of a trailhead parking lot.” By the tightening of her mouth I can tell I’ve said the wrong thing. The rum has loosened my tongue and made me say something she could only take as an affront.

She doesn’t respond right away. Instead she studies me in the firelight with her good eye. Her gaze is hard enough that it feels almost like one of her small hands is at my throat. “You look like a tough young man, Antonio.”

I shrug, but I’m pleased at the way my name sounds coming out of her mouth. “Call me Anton. Everyone but my parents does.”

That pleasure is lost when she asks, “Tell me, Anton, what the fuck do you care?”

I can only shrug again, taken aback and a little offended. “I like this place. I’ve heard my father talk about it since I was a kid. I don’t want to see it go down without a good fight.” Then my annoyance at her tone and words catches up to me. I remember my father’s advice about choosing fights. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to be much of a fight,” I comment, unable to resist the rum-fueled urge to provoke her a little further. To see what will happen.

“Screw you, kid.” She turns away from the dying fire and starts to walk in the direction the others had gone.

Her words hit my ears like a slap. It chases the alcohol right out of my blood. The realization that she is walking away with the belief that I’m nothing but an obnoxious jerk is almost painful. Things aren’t going at all like I’d hoped. I’m going to be left alone by a smoldering campfire, rejected by a woman who has some strange hold on me, and with nothing to look forward to but a tense confrontation with my brother and the destruction of the temple of my father’s youth.

I call after her, “Kim. I’m sorry—I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I want to learn more about this. I’m on your side.”

She turns quickly and walks back up to me. She stops only when her forehead is just a few inches from my chin. “I’m sick of hearing how hopeless it is. I’m sick of all my old friends telling me that. And I’m sick of guys like you, people who look and sound like they might be able to do something, chickening out. If it’s not much of a fight, it’s because everyone’s too afraid of this guy to fight. Everyone wants to just roll over for him. Let me tell you, Anton, I’m not going to do that. And I’m not going to listen to any defeatist bullshit.”

A little alcohol sneaks back into my voice as I try to lighten her mood. “Hey, you saw my dog. We’ll just turn him loose the next time Fast’s around.”

But it doesn’t work. She snorts and starts to turn away again.

“Cal and his crowd don’t seem too afraid,” I say, trying a more serious tack. “What about them?”

“That’s because they’re too dumb to know better. David Fast and his hired pit bull eat kids like them for breakfast.”

“Listen, Kim, I’m not a dumb kid and I’d like to help you.” I talk quickly, hoping to keep her from walking off again. “The thing is, my brother is coming up here and he’s more than a little messed up right now. My first priority has to be dealing with him. I’ve got to keep him and my father from killing each other.” And Roberto from killing himself.

But Kim isn’t paying attention to me anymore. She’s facing the nearly dead fire again, listening to the smoldering logs crackle and pop. After a few seconds her rigid posture seems to slacken a little, as if the anger’s draining away. I step up beside her and suppress an urge to put my hand on her shoulder.
Go away, rum.
Then she starts speaking to the embers.

“The thing that makes me sick is that Cal might be right. If this rally tomorrow doesn’t work out, and if the judge won’t go for an injunction, then Cal and his cigarette lighter and this ‘secret’ of his may be the only way to stop David Fast.” She looks over at me quickly and adds, “It might be the only way to save the valley.”

I wonder what’s more important to her—saving the valley or ruining Fast.

After a minute I ask, “What’s Cal’s secret?”

“Oh, he claims to have found some important cave but he won’t tell anyone where it is. He says there’s an Indian ruin in it, Anasazi maybe.” I recall that the Anasazi were an ancient tribe in the Four Corners region. They were famous both for the hidden cliff dwellings they inhabited and their sudden and mysterious disappearance many centuries ago. She pauses to look at me. “Do you know any cavers?”

I shake my head.

“There are a few in town I know. They’re all obsessive about keeping the places they explore secret. Anyway, Cal believes he’s found some undiscovered ruin full of artifacts. He says no one’s found it before because it’s hard to get to and because it was partially buried by an old rockfall. It’s supposed to be part of an enormous cave system that is so valuable it will keep the Forest Service from approving the swap. He says it’s bigger than Carlsbad or Kartchner, and valuable enough as a unique resource to throw off the land appraisals. He actually wants to call it ‘Cal’s Bad Caverns’—a play on words.”

I nod and smile with understanding. “Is it for real?”

She shrugs. “A few days ago he showed up at the campfire looking kind of scared and sick, and all covered with red mud. He said he’d gotten lost in it. Only he won’t tell anyone where it is because he’s afraid the government won’t let him be the one to explore it. He says they’ll put a lock over the entrance and only let government geologists and archaeologists go inside. And then they’ll turn it into a tourist attraction and destroy it. I think he’s probably full of shit, but he’s adamant that he won’t tell anyone where the entrance is until the Forest Service agrees to his terms. They’re supposed to be considering it, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve talked to some people there. They don’t believe him—they think he’s a crank who’s found some worthless little mud hole. And even if he were telling the truth about the size and importance of the cave, federal regulations wouldn’t allow them to agree to his conditions anyway. The rally tomorrow and the legal challenges are still the best hope we’ve got.”

Reading her better now, I know not to try a joke or even a comforting word. “Tell me about Fast,” I ask. I recall the venom I’d heard in her voice each time she’d spoken his name.

She answers slowly, still looking into the dying fire, choosing her words carefully. “David Fast is an arrogant prick. He more or less runs this county. He thinks he can do what he wants without consequence.” Then she smiles. “I think I’ve got him worried, though.”

After another quiet minute in the darkness she glances up at me. “Stick around for the rally tomorrow, Anton. You’ll see what we’re up against. It’s going to get ugly.”