Point of Law Read online

  “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 onl
y 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.”

  FIVE

  I WAKE UP even more thickheaded than usual, groggy and dry-mouthed.

  The sun is rising to the south of Wild Fire Peak, and the meadow is noisy with birds. My father is already sitting up in his bag. He’s gingerly touching his sunburned scalp with his calloused fingertips. The other campers and protesters, the “Wild Fire Tribe,” are still sleeping off the excesses of dope and rum that had been freely passed around the campfire. As I shed my bag, the sunlight touches my bare skin with a caress despite the cold night air that lingers in the valley. Oso rouses himself from a wool blanket by my side. He’d been curled on it in a huge, tight ball, with his nose a few inches shy of being able to bury itself in the stump of his tail.

  Dad and I shake the dew off our sleeping bags, then stretch them to dry on the Land Cruiser’s hood. I pull on a pair of shorts and a fleece vest. After taking care of some urgent morning business in the woods, I set up my tiny stove and spill a little gasoline on the primer. Nearby, Oso pees on the same tree where my father had just relieved himself.

  “Guess he’s showing me who’s top dog,” Dad grumbles.

  “I don’t think he liked being relegated to the backseat yesterday.”

  When I sleepily flick my lighter at the shallow pool of fuel I’d dribbled beneath the burner, flames shoot three feet in the air. I jerk backwards before my hair catches on fire. The sudden motion causes a heavy ache in my skull. The wine and the rum I’d helped myself to around the campfire last night feel as if they’re sloshing like mercury in my brain. For several years now, ever since my brother began his excessive experimentation with substance abuse, I haven’t been much of a drinker.

  I glance at my father when I think I hear a grunt or a chuckle from behind me. He’s frowning, but his blue eyes sparkle with amusement.

  “I think I’ll do the leading today,” he says. “You’re going to be useless.”

  “Bite me,” I say under my breath.

  According to my mother, the old man was a legendary drinker in the old days. It fitted with his wild-man image in the stories she told my brother and me. But these days he never drinks to the point that you could tell. The new Air Force frowns on excessive alcohol consumption. And I know that as Dad gets older he’s having a harder time keeping up with the young Pararescue soldiers he commands.

  We haven’t even finished our oatmeal when the first car rolls into the meadow from the Forest Service road. Soon it’s followed by several others. Most of them are muddy, oversized pickups with gun racks visible in the rear windows. I guess that they belong to the counter-protesters—I doubt many environmentalists would drive one these diesel-guzzling beasts. Some of the trucks are equipped with oversized tires that even at low speeds chew then spit out the meadow’s grass.

  The trucks park haphazardly in the clearing. Some of them appear aggressive in stopping very close to where the Tribe members are waking up and rubbing their eyes as they stare in confusion at the snarling engines. The people who get out of the trucks are, without exception, young to middle-aged men. I remember Kim’s warning from the night before—that things could get ugly—and think that the fact that no women or children have been brought along is a very bad sign. The men look tough when they get out of their trucks. Physical laborers, it appears from the broad forearms and sunburnt necks. Probably construction workers promised work on the new development in the valley.

  The majority of them wear what could be a uniform of jeans and work boots and baseball caps, the only concession to individualism in what tobacco or beer company logo is displayed on their T-shirts. They stare at the protesters with what looks to me like a sort of grim amusement, the way a pack of coyotes stare at a herd of sheep.

  Only one of the trucks is even remotely new looking—a huge Chevy Suburban painted a glossy black beneath the thin layer of dust the Forest Service road has sprinkled on it. The license plate reads “FSTRNU,” which, after a moment’s thought, I decipher as “Faster than You.” It must belong to David Fast, the notorious developer. An arrogant prick, I remember Kim saying. She also called him evil.

  The driver of the black Suburban steps out. David Fast is dressed more expensively than the others, in a creased pair of khakis and a white shirt with pearl buttons. He looks around the meadow with a concerned, proprietary air. While the license plate gives credence to Kim’s description of a self-satisfied jerk, his appearance isn’t evil.

  He’s a tall man, a little heavy with too much fat and too much muscle. Like an aging football player ten years past his prime. Although he’s probably Kim’s age, he looks a few years older. His graying hair is buzzed short on a handsome head.

  Another man looks evil, though. He climbs out of the Suburban’s passenger side and slams the door shut behind him. He does it hard enough so that the echo bangs off the forested hillsides surrounding the valley. The sound reminds me of a bull elk’s territorial bugle. This man has a pumpkin-sized head, no neck, and the powerful torso of a prison weight lifter. The prison part is emphasized because of the tattoos that cover his arms. Even from this distance, I recognize some of the tattoos as a mark of membership in a jailhouse white supremacist gang. And I remember how at the campfire meeting the night before, several of the activists had complained about how Fast’s harassment had only become serious after he’d hired a professional enforcer named Alf Burgermeister, a.k.a. Rent-a-Riot. Someone had mentioned that Burgermeister sells his services to antienvironmentalist causes all over the country. This guy certainly looks like someone who would be called Rent-a-Riot. His menacing appearance is accentuated by the way his head is carefully shaved but for the long, red sideburns that meet above his upper lip.

  The men who look like construction workers sit on the tailgates of their trucks or stand around them in the grass, talking, laughing, and watching the Tribe members in the meadow. Burgermeister calls to them in a deep baritone—a sergeant summoning his troops. For a moment I wonder who’s in charge—Fast or his enforcer. The men respond instantly, wandering over to gather around the developer’s shiny truck.

  “What are we going to climb today, Ant?” my father asks, ignoring the spectacle around us. “It doesn’t make sense for us to wait all morning for Roberto.”

  “I think I’m sticking around to check this thing out. There’s something nasty in the air.”

  “I smell it, too. That’s just your brother, on his way,” he says in a rare try at a joke.

  It’s a sign that he’s feeling a bit of stress. In my grumpy mood, I find it kind of amusing. This man can jump out of planes at over sixty thousand feet, climb run-out 5.12, fire just about any weapon known to man, run and swim in the worst of conditions for ho
urs at a time, and perform every type of emergency surgery, yet he’s nervous about a reunion with his eldest son. To be fair, though, he should be nervous.

  I pour myself some coffee from the kettle I’d placed on the hissing stove and keep watching the meadow. I glare at a new pickup coming into the meadow when it rumbles too close to us. The lone driver, a burly young guy with his sleeves rolled to his shoulders, hesitates while looking back at me. I can almost read his thoughts as he takes in my scrappy beard, scarred face, and the climber’s arms that I’ve folded across my chest. He slows, considering how to respond to the challenge in my eyes, and looks over to see just how far away his friends are. Then he glances at Oso, who places himself between the truck and our camp, and wisely decides to pull to another part of the meadow.

  My dad touches my shoulder.

  “There’s nothing you can do, Antonio,” he says gently. “We’re in Colorado. Your badge isn’t any good here.”

  I answer without looking at him and try to make a joke of my own. “Badges? Don’t need no stinking badges.”

  My father clips his rock shoes and chalk bag to a small pack. He shakes his head at me before he walks into the forest and heads in the direction of the canyon. He’s going bouldering, I guess. He’s too cautious these days to solo on the steep canyon walls.

  David Fast and his hirelings don’t outnumber the Tribe’s mostly youthful protesters, but they certainly outdo them in intimidation. Their physical presence is bigger. Harder. More confident. After disassembling the stove and washing the dishes in the stream, I walk among the pickup trucks and SUVs with my steaming coffee mug and observe the bumper stickers that attest to membership in antienvironmental organizations such as Wise Use and the Rocky Mountain Legal Foundation. Some are even amusing, saying things such as “Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?” and “The Only Good Trees Are Stumps.” My favorite reads, “Hungry and Out-of-Work? Eat an Environmentalist.”