Spirit of the Sycamore

Up canyon, where for perhaps a hundred thousand years the wild winter flood waters had dumped tons of rock and soil which formed a mile long, half mile wide flat, he heard men yelling back and forth. He looked toward the noise and then he heard the sound of a diesel engine below. Turning his glasses slightly up and then down on his nose to better focus his sight, he saw a plume of black diesel smoke and the orange-yellow of a D-9 Cat pushing through the trees. He could see the tops of ancient pinions whip back and forth and then arc toward the ground as they were torn from the earth and brought beneath the treads of the killer machine. He heard the sounds clearly now, the awful shriek of splintering live junipers and the crack of broken limbs. It was, he looked at his watch, 6:15. Perhaps they thought no one was up this early. There was an injunction. They were breaking the law, but once the trees were down and the road was cut, it was too late, and they knew it. They might pay a fine for ‘jumping the gun,’ but it was worth it to them. He had to stop them.

Ben checked his shoes again, hitched his belt tighter around his thin waist, marked the spot where the Cat was ripping the life out of the heart of the canyon, and started down the way he had come. He had gone less then a hundred yards when he saw two men climbing toward him. He stopped, unsure whether they had seen him. The lead man stopped, looked around until he spotted Ben, then pointed so that the other could see the old man’s location. They came on, faster now.

Ben felt the awful paralyzing grip of fear. He didn’t know the smaller man, but he had seen the taller man at their meetings. He always hung back and never participated. He knew who he worked for. Suddenly, a lot of things made sense. He had long suspected that the deaths of Carri Sides and Jim Westermann, other leaders who had opposed the project, had not been accidental. He turned, urgencies driving him, and started moving away along a tangled animal trail which lead in the direction of home. He was strong, but his eighty years didn’t give him an advantage. Within minutes, out of breath and dizzy from his efforts, he leaned against the standing, bare trunk of a long dead pinon.

Puffing and sweating, cursing under their breaths, the men had him. "You smart-assed old fart," the taller of the two snarled, "you old son-of-a-bitch, you thought you and that citizen’s group you founded could stop us. You thought you could hurt us by getting court orders? You dumb old fart! Well no more! Today you have an accident... Look what we got here, Phil, a real tree hugger. Quit hugging that tree, damn you. I said let go!"

The other man, smaller, meaner looking, sweating profusely, interrupted. "Yeah, you old coot! Today you had a hiking accident. Clumsy of you to slip and fall. What were you doing spying on us anyway?"

Ben kept his arms around the tree trunk as long as possible, scratching into the old wood with his thumbnail. His breath was gone, his throat dry. He tried to yell for help, but his voice cracked and came out raspy. He couldn’t hold on any longer. The taller man grabbed him by the collar and belt, swung him up above his head and walked to the edge of the slight step that Ben had used as a trail. The next level was about five feet below, covered in catclaw, ringed with waxy-leafed manzanita.

With tremendous downward force, the tall man slammed Ben into the catclaw and onto the jumbled rocks and gravel. The old man had been much lighter than he had thought. "Nice flight old man?" he asked, taunting the broken form as Ben writhed once in horrible pain, shuddered and lay still.

"Poor man must have slipped!" the shorter killer quipped. "My goodness, someone will have to find him in a day or two."

"Not too soon Phil. The heat and critters have a lot to do."

They moved carefully now, wiping their footprints away with boughs and making their way back the way they had come.

"You gotta admit, Chris, that guy would have preferred to die out here. He was some kind of nut!"

Their laughter came from deep within reptilian parts. The canyon’s living things felt evil wafting.