Point of Law Page 4

  “Hey, Antonio. Glad you could make it, man. Where’s that sweet dog of yours?”

  “Back at camp. With my dad.”

  Her bright teeth flash. “Leonard, your old man, he didn’t seem too into things. Guy seemed a little hostile, you know?”

  “He’s got a lot on his mind right now.”

  “But I fucking love your dog. You should have brought him.”

  Sunny’s looking up at me, staring openly. I should be flirting back. She’s wearing the same high-cut khaki shorts she’d had on earlier, now with a flannel shirt that’s unbuttoned halfway down her chest instead of the loose purple tank top. Cannabis Sativa is her perfume of choice. Even though she’s a few years younger than me, her sexuality is so obvious and so powerful that I toy with the image of a sleeping-bag fling. But I’m still feeling the lingering effect her friend Kim had on me in the afternoon. And I’m a little wary of Sunny, because of what I suspect is her job as a recruiting tool. I don’t want to be manipulated. At least not so obviously.

  “C’mon,” she says, tugging my hand, “there’s people you should meet.”

  She introduces me to a few of the younger activists. Their faces are bright in the firelight. The flames glint off the studs and hoops that adorn many of their eyebrows, lips, and noses. Studded tongues click against teeth when they speak. They seem so alike, all working so hard at distinguishing themselves and yet so disappointingly similar. Because I know it will be hard to differentiate them in the daylight, I don’t worry too much about trying to remember names. But one stands out—a skinny young man named Cal, who puts his arms around Sunny protectively from behind. He wears a Gore-Tex jacket that’s caked with dried mud.

  “Antonio Burns, huh?” he says after being introduced. “Sunny told me about meeting you this afternoon. I’ve heard your name, dude. Used to read about you in those climbing magazines. Your brother, too.”

  I smile at him to convey that I’m not a threat, that I’m not hitting on Sunny. I’m probably not convincing, though, as Sunny still has a warm grip on my hand.

  “Are you the one who’s teaching Sunny to climb?”

  “Trying to. But I’m just a recreational climber, you know? I don’t do anything serious. I’m more of a cave rat.”

  “Oh yeah?” I ask. “Is there a lot of that around here?” My dad had never mentioned finding any caves.

  Cal shrugs, meets my eyes for a second, and then looks at the ground before meeting my eyes again. “Sure. There’s caves everywhere. If you know where to look.”

  “Was it you guys I saw this morning, rappelling down that red cliff?”

  Cal looks away quickly now—it looks almost like he’s blushing but it’s hard to tell in the dark. “Could have been us. I was just teaching Sunny to rappel.”

  I assume he’s embarrassed to have been caught rappelling instead of climbing, and even more embarrassed that it was on such an ignoble bit of rock compared to the higher, more vertical, and more solid stone down-canyon. Even Sunny looks away and drops my hand as if she knows enough about climbing to be embarrassed. Cal seems eager to change the subject.

  “Haven’t heard much about you lately, although your brother’s still pictured in the mags all the time. You get a job or something?”

  “Yeah, something like that” is all I will admit. It’s my turn to be evasive.

  The night is loud with voices, low laughter, the crackle of the giant campfire, and beyond, the rhythmic chirping of crickets. I can’t help but keep glancing around for Kim in the reflection of the flames.

  She finally shows up when just about everyone else from the environmentalists’ camp has already appeared. The fire is well fueled from the enormous pile of dead wood that I’d seen the activists gathering in the forest all afternoon. Kim steps close to the fire, wearing the same jeans and shoes she’d had on in the day but with a sleek-looking black fleece coat to protect her slim frame from the night’s chill. She begins to speak while the rest of the activists squat on large branches they’ve dragged off the woodpile.

  I don’t think she’s noticed me until she starts off by saying, “There’s a new person with us tonight—his name’s Antonio Burns—so I’m going to review the situation here in the valley for his benefit and for those of you that haven’t been around lately.”

  The shifting orange light from the campfire dances over her as she explains how Wild Fire Valley is a part of the San Juan National Forest, created in 1937, and supposedly placed forever in the public’s trust for the use and enjoyment of the nation’s citizens. Several times over the last twenty years various developers have attempted to lease the land from the federal government in order to build a ski resort that would rival nearby mountains like Aspen, Telluride, and Purgatory. Wild Fire Peak, the broad mountain that stands above us blocking out the moon and the stars to the east, is considered to be the perfect ski mountain due to its abundant winter snowfall, moderately steep glades, and quick access to the nearby town of Tomichi. For years the Forest Service, with the strident support of environment groups, rebuffed the developers’ proposals. The prospective developers grew more and more excited as profits in Telluride and Aspen skyrocketed with the influx of stockbrokers and movie stars in the 1980s.

  Finally a local timber baron and developer named David Fast got the attention of the Forest Service by proposing a land swap. He had recently mortgaged himself to the hilt in order to purchase a huge private inholding to the north in the White River National Forest. That piece of land was at the top of the Forest Service’s “must have” list, as it was in the very center of a proposed habitat for the reintroduction of the Canadian lynx. But there was no way a Republican Congress, which was vociferously opposed to the reintroduction plan, would ever approve the millions of dollars it would take to buy the land for inclusion in the National Forest. Fast bought the inholding, placing his bet in a great gamble, and then offered to trade it for the entire Wild Fire Valley. The Forest Service was definitely interested, as the trade would cost them nothing and give them something they very much wanted.

  Federal law requires that an environmental assessment be performed on any proposed land swap. Unfortunately, the Forest Service did not even have the available funding to undertake it. So David Fast volunteered to cover the expense himself and hire the necessary scientists and environmental engineers. According to their assessment, the Forest Service would benefit tremendously by allowing the exchange—the value of the White River land was appraised at twice that of Wild Fire Valley due to the discovery of a vast amount of coal buried beneath its rolling forests.

  Public hearings were held. Various environmental organizations, including Kim’s small group of locals who called themselves “the Wild Fire Tribe,” decried the proposed swap. When it appeared that the Forest Service would deny the developer’s plan, David Fast announced his “reluctant” intention to develop his White River land if the swap wasn’t approved. He was going to strip-mine it for coal, he told a reporter, as that was the only way to recover something from his gamble and keep himself from bankruptcy. The resulting excavations would render his land and the entire White River National Forest around it forever uninhabitable for the tuft-eared cats.

  “Fucking blackmail,” one of the young activists next to me mutters.

  The national environmental organizations were horrified—they desperately wanted to reintroduce the lynx. They had worked for years toward that goal. Their position switched overnight from condemnation to eager enthusiasm for the swap. The small and powerless Wild Fire Tribe found themselves alone in opposing the trade. With the support of the larger environmental groups, the regional manager of the Forest Service announced his intention to formally approve the exchange. This valley would then belong to David Fast.

  A few weeks ago Kim’s group learned from one of the engineers who performed the assessment that the whole thing was a “bunch of crap.” There was no economically extractable coal to be found on Fast’s White River land. The land had no significant
economic value at all. It was too remote for tourist cabins. It was too wooded for ranching. Its trees were too gnarled and diseased for logging. Yet the Forest Service and the environmental groups who’d fallen for Fast’s blackmail remained adamant that the swap must go forward. For the sake of the lynx.

  The Tribe’s allegations of fraud on the part of Fast and his hired engineers have once again put the developer’s plans in jeopardy. Fearing for his project, Fast has hired a “consultant,” a man named Alf Burgermeister, a.k.a. Rent-a-Riot, who is considered an expert in combating environmental groups. It’s rumored that Fast may have even made him a partner. In any event, the resulting harassment has been petty for the most part. Like the Tribe’s members receiving fake flyers that changed the time and place of where the Forest Service was to hold community meetings to get public feedback on the swap. Some of it had been irritating—members of the Tribe had had expired license plate permits stuck over their current ones so that the local police would frequently stop them. And some of it had been mildly frightening.

  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

  AFTER 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?”