One tractor engineer, perhaps thinking to frighten the children away, elevated his dozer blade, canting it forward and back. Dirt and stones cascaded upon the nearest, smallest, slowest child. The child sat down on the ground and began to cry. A young woman broke from the body line and rushed upon the eighty-ton Mitsubishi, waving an American flag on a stout pole. She yanked her little boy to safety, then drove the brass spear-tip of her staff into the tractor’s left eye, smashing it. Not satisfied, she drew back her weapon and thrust it at the other eye, barely missing as the driver reversed his machine and swung it aside on one locked tread.
Shouts of approval from the unruly mob; growls of anger from the duly authorized ruly personnel.
“Arrest that woman!” Ranger Dick commanded, pointing.
Two sheriff’s deputies approached the spear-wielder. She faced them with her weapon drawn back over one shoulder, a seven-year-old boy clutching at her leg. “Don’t touch us, you nuke pukes,” she snarled, eyes glaring like those of a wildcat at bay. Her name in fact, as known in Earth First! circles, happened to be none other than Wildcat Annie, a Forest Service office clerk from Flagstaff, Arizona, divorced, mother of one, wife of two, mistress of three, lover of four: Miz Wildcat Annie, free woman.
The deputies circled cautiously. One crept behind her, made a lunge, got a chokehold on her neck. The little boy kicked him in the shins. The second deputy, club in one hand, handcuffs in the other, grabbed at her in front. Annie thrust viciously with her spear, jabbed the man behind on the backstroke, the one in front with her fore-stroke. Both men staggered, hands on their hurts. (The wildcat is a vicious animal; when attacked it defends itself.)
“Annie, Annie, don’t!” yelled the Hayduchess, straining at the chain that bound her, longing to jump into the battle. “Go limp, Annie, go limp. …”
Two more men joined the attack, striking at Annie’s pole with their heavy-duty Mag-lights. The spear broke; Annie sank down, covering her little boy with her body. One man struck her on the head with his club. She went limp — too late. Another manacled her hands behind her back, forcing the cuffs so tight her wrists turned white. They dragged Annie and the child away. The child wailed in fury and terror.
“Please do not resist arrest please,” the ranger pleaded through the bullhorn, “and nobody will get hurt.”
This scene was too much for Gordon the Muscleman. Leaving his anchorage at the north end of the line he rushed up to the center, pulling the mighty cast-iron monkey wrench from his belt. Samson unsheathing his sword.
“Gordon, sit down,” the Hayduchess screamed.
Gordon ignored her. Charging at the nearest Mitsubishi, muscles rippling under oily bronze, he whacked it a mighty blow on the ‘dozer blade. A tiny hairline crack appeared. The operator pulled his hydraulic levers, lifting the blade above Gordon’s reach. Gordon stepped beneath it and swung his warclub into the radiator’s protective grille. The grille caved in. (Nip-Ware: soybean metallurgics.) Gordon drew back and struck again. His monkey wrench sank into the fine leaden honeycomb of cooling fins. A stream of green Prestone gushed forth, like liquid from the Mosaic rock, and Gordon roared in triumph. As he struggled with his wrench, however, which was jammed in the depths of the radiator, the engineer lowered the ‘dozer blade, trapping Gordon within its heavy arms. At once four burly cops surrounded him, batons descending again and again upon his hatless curly haired skull. Gordon went down, passed out, was shackled at the wrists and lugged away by the heels, his near-naked carcass scraping over sand, stone, the bristling little blackbrush, the prickly pear with its hairy spines, a stiff-bladed yucca, the mean and nasty hedgehog cactus, a few broken beer bottles and crumpled Pepsi cans left behind by the survey crew.
Blood on the rock. The tang of fresh blood in the air. A bleeding, unconscious, blood-smeared beautiful young male body flopping in the dust, fading away.
“Please,” Ranger Dick begged through her amplifier, “please cooperate with the police officers. Resisting arrest is a very serious offense. These men are here to help you. Please …”
“Go limp,” shouted Mary Sojourner, as the wave of deputies and DPS S.W.A.T. technicians closed in, “everybody just go limp. They won’t club you if you’re lying down.” We hope, she muttered to herself. Police riot coming up.
“The policeman is your friend,” bellowed Bishop Love, smiling, enjoying himself despite this latest assault upon his expensive imported equipment. “Try to remember that.” His boys from the graders, trucks and drill rigs ambled near, also grinning, ready with wrenches of their own, ballpeen hammers, chainsaws, towing chains and tire irons, eager reinforcements when and if needed.
The bulldozer operator with the bleeding radiator, essaying a final service with his wounded machine, ground the treads of the tractor over the fallen monkey wrench, revolving half the weight of the Mitsubishi upon that one antiquated obsolete picturesque forever-symbolic Luddite appliance.
“Kill your engine!” the Bishop hollered, “afore it seizes up.”
The operator obeyed, embarrassed, then attempted to save face by climbing down from his seat, picking up Gordon’s monkey wrench — undamaged — and hurling it two-handed toward the rim of the Neck. Too heavy for him. His fling fell short by a yard, the tool sliding into a dense thicket (over-grazing) of assorted cactus.
“Fuckin’ goddamn Sahara Club junk …” The operator glared at the disappearing Gordon, then at the women chained to the juniper.
The struggle was brief. Seeing the bloody fate of Wildcat Annie and golden-boy Gordon, the majority of the Earth First! demonstrators fell to the ground, hands over heads, hoping for a quick and non-violent arrest. The gesture did them little good. Enraged and inflamed by even token resistance, loyal to tradition, the police laid about with abandon, cracking heads on every side, running down the few who tried to flee, collaring children and yanking them over the stony ground toward the waiting vans. Within ten minutes the opposition had collapsed and all prisoners had been dragged away.
All but the five young fanatics chained to the tree. Breathing hard, sweating like pigs, the lawmen clustered about this final knot of obstructionism and pondered the problem.
“Bolt cutters,” a police Sergeant said. “Hacksaws.”
“On the way,” replied Ranger Dick.
“We got a chainsaw,” another man said. “Why not cut down the tree and drag ‘em away with a tractor, tree and all?”
“Not a bad idea,” the Sergeant said.
“We’ll wait,” said the ranger.
“Burn the tree,” the bulldozer engineer snarled, still miffed by his defeat. “Goddamn green-bigot witches, douse ‘em with diesel, set the tree on fire. That’ll learn ‘em.”
“Good idea,” the Sergeant said, “but not legal. Where those tools?”
The tools arrived, one heavy-duty hacksaw with extra blades, and a heavy-duty bolt cutter with handles three feet long. The men tried the bolt cutter then the hacksaw but got nowhere; both chain and padlock were heavy-duty also, high carbon steel hardware especially designed (and selected) to resist such nibbling and gnawing attacks.
“Plastique,” suggested another policeman. “A small shaped charge would do the trick.”
“Not a bad idea,” the Sergeant said. “Might have to take some casualties but that would do it. What do you say, girls?” They stared at him. “It’s that or the key, girls. Tell us where the key is and we all go home in a jiffy. How about it?”
“Who you callin’ girl, boy?” the Hayduchess said. “And where’s your badge? What’s your number, officer?”
“Yeah,” said Mary Sojourner, “how about that, copper? What’s your name?”
“Tough broads. Tough, tough broads.” He slapped Mary, not gently, across the cheek. Her head bounced against the juniper’s trunk. “Where’s the key, woman?”
She kicked him in the shins with a heavy-duty hiking boot. “Don’t know, man.”
The Sergeant lurched back a step, rubbed his wound. “Hobble these ladie
s. All of them. Handcuff them too.” Taking care, the men snapped cuffs on the women’s ankles, then on their wrists. The police Sergeant, safe from kicks and claws, leaned his hard and mustached face into the delicate face of Erika the Nordska. “Now. You. Where’s the key, miss?” She did not — could not — immediately reply. The Sergeant grunted: “Speak up. We’re in a hurry.”
The Super-G.E.M. waited on the tapering east apron of the Neck, big shoes at rest for the moment but its electrical motors humming, buzzing, throbbing. The man at the control console of the air-conditioned cab peered out through his wall of glass, waiting. His assistant, the oiler, a young man in greasy coveralls, stood on the ground fifty feet below, ready to indicate by hand signals exactly where the monster might step next, safely, without tottering sideways over the brink. The drag bucket, big enough to hold four Greyhound buses in its iron maw, swung gently back and forth from the tip of the upraised boom. The red lights blinked, the strobe light flashed, high on the mast and A-frame, far above the seven-story powerhouse. The power cable lay in the dirt behind, an orange-colored serpent of copper, insulation and fabric, thick as a wrestler’s thigh, leading up the slope and over the rise to the nearest mobile sub-station two miles away, the sub-station mounted on a sledge and linked in turn to the EHV (extra high voltage) powerline that looped across the desert between Page, Arizona and St. George, Utah. Time is money, said I. B. Watson, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Adam Smith, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, and the entire genealogy of logical positivists that began with Leviticus and achieved transcendent apotheosis in the figure of J. Dudley Love, Bishop of Ward One, Hotrocks, Landfill County, Utah. Even so trivial an interruption as this Earth First! farce — with motors running — was costing Syn-Fuels Corporation close to ten thousand dollars a minute.
“Speak up!” the police Sergeant barked in Erika’s face, spraying her with ungentlemanly spittle. “Or we’ll begin some scientific interrogation here, you know what I mean, young lady.” He stuck a cigarette in his teeth, pulled a lighter from his pocket, thumbed it into flame, and waved it slowly back and forth in front of her pale, lovely, horrified face. “Where’s the key?”
She gulped. She licked her lips and swallowed again.
“Wait a minute,” Ranger Dick said, “what do you think you’re doing? Put that thing away.”
“Yeah,” the Hayduchess bellowed. “Let her alone, you ugly pig. You’re so fuckin’ tough, try me.”
The Sergeant paused, grinned, lit his cigarette and looked around. “Nervous, nervous ladies. What do you think I am, some kind of Nazi? I was only bluffing this kid. For godsake. Some people got no sense of humor.” He spoke to his man on the other side of the juniper, still patiently grating away with hacksaw on chain. “How’s it coming?”
“Slow, Sarge, slow. Take us another hour at least.”
“Yeah? Well, keep at it. Somebody spell him off.”
A pause.
“All right, wait, let’s use our heads here.” Smiling, Bishop Love came forward at last, after retiring to his truck for a bit of medical refreshment. The Bishop was a cough-syrup fiend; a dash of codeine could always get him through the most trying of afternoons, that end-of-the-day malaise. And indeed the shadows were getting lengthy. The black shape of GOLIATH had long since crept from base of tub over the eastern end of the land bridge to the top of the slope beyond. Quitting time was near for most of these machines and men, not to mention Ranger Dick and her beau J. Dudley. A very special occasion lay in view. Might as well call it quits for the day. Love looked at the man in the G.E.M.’s control cab, caught his eye, and made a throat-slashing gesture. Kill it. The man nodded, lowered the long boom safely among the junipers east of the Neck, setting the giant bucket down beyond the construction equipment parked up there. He then pushed the red button of the “Excitation” switch, shutting off power to the operating equipment. The main engine continued to throb; it had to be shut down by a throw switch on the interior wall of the powerhouse and fan vent room.
Love waited. When he heard the dragline motors die, he turned again to the crowd of impatient, irritated men in bloodstained uniforms.
“You got an idea, Bishop?”
“Yep.” Grinning, Love advanced to the juniper, tugged at the massive log chain between the bodies of Erika and Susan Smith. Ranger Dick watched closely from her position apart; she despised this whole proceeding and earnestly longed to be through with it. “All we need,” the Bishop said, “is a few inches slack in this here chain, right?” The others nodded. “So all we got to do,” he went on, “is heist one of these here slim little female bodies out from behint this here goldang chain, right?”
“You must be talkin’ about me,” the Hayduchess said.
Love grinned at Georgia. “Not you, sweetheart.” He surveyed the five women. “We best start with the skinniest one.”
“You hear that, men?” the Hayduchess snorted. “You hear that? He’s insultin’ me. He thinks cause I’m half redskin he can insult me. I’m minority, man, I got rights. You pull anybody out of this chain you got to pull me first.”
The Sergeant nodded to one of his men. The two took a firm stance before Erika the Svenska.
“Up or down, Sarge?”
“Up. We can get her hips through this thing a lot easier’n we can her … her, ah, chest. Don’t want to damage this little sweetheart.” The Sergeant put his hands under Erika’s armpits. “Now you take ahold of her belt there, under the chain. Then lift.”
At once the women began to howl. “Rape!” the Hayduchess bellowed, “rape! rape! rape!,” and the others echoed her inflammatory cry. While Erika herself, in a voice loud and clear, called out, “Noli me tangere!” The kid knew her Latin. “Noli me tangere!” As best she could, with hands cuffed and ankles bound, waist chained to the tree, she wriggled free of the policemen’s grasp. “Iss no touch zee body.”
The Sergeant paused. Sweating and exasperated, he turned to Ranger Dick. “Ginny,” he said, “are we raping this girl? I ask you.”
“Sexual harassment,” Mary Sojourner said. “Those two men are using her for sexual purposes while pretending to make an arrest.”
“Right,” the Hayduchess said, “it’s sexism pure and simple.”
The argument raged back and forth for another minute. When a pause came the ranger said, “You women are resisting arrest. Where’s the key to that padlock? Give us the key, nobody will touch anybody for any sexual purpose while I’m here.”
“That’s absolutely right,” the smiling Bishop said, slipping an arm around Ranger Dick’s abundant hips. “We got no time for no hanky panky on duty, right, Ginny?”
She removed his arm. The key was not forthcoming. “Okay,” the ranger said, “pull Miss Chickie-Poo out of that chain.”
Again the two men took up position, bracing themselves for leverage. “And no touching any erogenous parts,” Ranger Dick added. The men nodded, well aware at the same time that the supple lass beneath their hands was totally erogenous. She possessed no non-erogenous parts. None. But they would try. Hands supporting her armpits, tugging upward at the belt threaded through the copper-riveted loops of her bluejeans, they hoisted her an inch or two up from behind the chain.
Erika screamed: “No! No touch ziss body!”
The two men paused for breath and to readjust their awkward positions. At the same moment a large male figure came clambering over the south rim of the Neck, rose to full height and dashed toward the juniper tree.
“Hands off that girl!” cried Oral Hatch, R.M., hurling himself through the air and tackling the Sergeant around the knees. Both men crashed to the slickrock, fists and elbows flying. For a few seconds the battle was obscured by blurred, high-speed motion while the Sergeant’s men stood by, batons upraised to strike. When Oral appeared on top, his head clear, the sticks descended — thunk! thunk, thunk! — and the issue was settled. (“Oral, Oral, my luff! my darlink!”) Promptly and efficiently a couple of cops manacled young Hatch, yanked him to his feet and fr
og-marched him to the one van still waiting. The rest of Earth First!, singing and laughing, had been hauled off to bail or jail about half an hour earlier.
The old journalist, wedged like a lizard deep in a crevice under an overhanging boulder, watched and waited, fearful, trembling, snapping pictures when he could, scribbling notes and chuckling semi-hysterically: Ah splendid! splendid! Magnifique! Bellissima! Absolutely topping, topping!, I say. …
The contest was over. Hatch dispatched, the men dragged sweet Erika the Svenska maid from her place behind the chain, nearly stripping off her jeans in the process — that chain was taut — but not quite, since Ranger Dick did not for a moment allow her attention to be diverted from the arrest. With the chain now slackened, the police and deputies had no trouble pulling the remaining four women from their places and toting them off, shackled hand and foot, to the van.
After a bit of ceremonial handshaking and mutual congratulations, the DPS S.W.A.T. team ascended in their helicopters — one more miraculous assumption — and the sheriff’s deputies drove off in their 4 x 4 entropy wagons. As the mutter of motors faded, a spontaneous chorus of cheers arose from the throats of the Search & Rescue Team and Love’s construction workers — ten men, four women.
His arm once again around the waist of his smiling rangerette, Bishop Love saluted his employees with upraised can of Pepsi-Cola. “Yeah!” he shouted, grinning with pride, “I reckon we whupped their ass. I reckon them Earth Fist bigots ain’t gonna give us no more trouble on this project. And afore we all go home, let’s have a little victory celebration. Let’s gather up all these goldang Earth Fist flags and rags and posters and make a bonfire. Now I just happen to have an icebox full of ribeye steaks in my little old truck, and two cases of Pepsi-Cola packed in ice. And also another thing — “