A Good Day to Die

by Jim Harrison

  “Jesus, Sylvia, I was bullshitting. I never left the place. Go to sleep and we'll wake you when it gets light.” I withdrew my grip, wondering if he had actually seen us, not that it mattered as long as he assured her that he hadn't. He put his hand on my shoulder and then changed the tape. “That fucking Haggard makes me sad.”

  My eyes were open but I didn't notice the pale light coming through the trees until Tim got out of the car and stretched. My trance had been involved in trying to summon up enough good things that had happened in my life to ease my immediate fatalism. Despite the buzz of meth I was stuck to my seat again and my brain only lightened when I thought of how Tim reassured Sylvia just an hour ago. It had seemed out of character.

  The first order of the morning was to hide the car. We walked a few hundred feet further down the trail and found a hollow in a stand of spruce. The rain had stopped but the ruts in the trail were slippery and full of water. The air was incomprehensibly sweet and we could hear the roar of water coming under the conduit chutes of the dam but couldn't see the dam itself in the dim light. Tim backed the car and trailer in the spruce and we broke branches off and covered both the car and the bright orange trailer. Sylvia was humming and we were all in a good businesslike mood. Then we walked the hundred yards or so down to the dam itself and I was appalled: the dam was at least seventy feet across and about twelve feet wide. There was a cattle path and tractor tracks across the top of it and it looked terribly solid. The backwater stretched until it was lost in the morning fog; and underneath the water passed through three conduits a yard in diameter shooting out with tremendous force onto a declining series of rock steps. A quarter mile downstream I could make out the North Fork of the Clearwater. I was stunned both with the size of the dam and the momentum of the water. Tim walked the cowpath studying the setup and we followed with Sylvia folding her arms against the chill.

  “Shore is a big bastard.” Tim was drawing on a scrap of paper with a ballpoint. He stooped and held the paper against his knee. I noticed for the first time that he had the .38 stuck in his belt.

  “I think it's too big for what we got.” I only remembered glancing at the dam in irritation when I had seen it a year and a half before. It hadn't seemed nearly so large. On the bank of the backwater was a huge irrigation pump and large pipe used to irrigate pasture and hayfields. The soil was porous and wouldn't hold the rain long enough for a good crop of hay.

  “No, we got plenty. We'll just have to place it right.” Tim slid down the bank on the downstream side to get a better look at the structure of the conduits. He yelled something at us but it was lost in the din of water. I felt a very giddy itch to get my rod and walk down to the Clearwater which I could see flowing hugely along between its banks of rock and pine.

  On the way back to the car we were startled by noise in the brush and Tim, stupidly I thought, pulled out his pistol. But then a group of shorthorn cattle appeared and walked past us toward the pond. Three or four of the cows had calves and these turned and bellowed at us. I hoped it wasn't a cow-calf operation because they always included a seed bull that could be rather nasty, especially if they were range cattle and not used to people. We were nearly to the car when we heard the sound of a motor and literally dove into the brush and deep grass. An old Dodge pick-up passed within a few feet of us driving toward the dam. Tim eased his head out of the cover.

  “It's turning around.” We sank even lower to the wet ground. I idly brushed a mosquito from Sylvia's leg and contemplated moving my hand up her leg but thought it wouldn't be fair. I stifled a giggle; my minimal dose of meth was in full stride and I felt when the pick-up came back past us that I could jump out and kick it off the road like a toy.

  “Maybe he just comes by once a day.” Tim scratched his head and I saw he was sweating profusely. A drop trickled down over his scar which looked ghastly against his paleness. He hadn't been eating much unless he smoked a joint first and then it was mostly junk like hamburgers and potato chips and Coke.

  We sat around in the car talking excitedly for an hour or so. I explained again how impossible it was for the steelhead, a fish they had never seen, to move up through the conduits to spawn where they had been spawned themselves and generations before them. I was rattling on when Tim decided to sneak over and have a look at the ranch house to check for activity. I wanted to go along but he said no, that he had had a lot of experience. He put on a faded green fatigue shirt and left.

  “We could make love.” I looked at Sylvia in the back but she returned my stare blankly.

  “Don't be silly.”

  I got out of the car, pushed the brush aside and sat on the hood. Oh well. I wanted to pass the time. I lit a joint and smoked it down to a wee roach. I was thinking of the day a few weeks before when on a dare I had dropped a triple hit of psilocybin and passed twelve hours in a sweet trance. I mostly sat on a pier and watched the movement of the tide but toward the end I walked across town to a raw bar and ate clams, oysters, shrimp and some smoked amberjack. There was a delicious red haze tingeing all people and objects and though I was terribly disoriented it didn't seem to matter. I went to a girl's apartment and talked for a while and we made love, but it was very hard to concentrate because I kept getting lost in the music on the phonograph. Sylvia put her hand on my arm and I was startled.

  “Do you think it will work?”

  I put my arms around her and kissed her neck and lips. “He didn't see us. He was teasing.” I enjoyed the lie because it obviously brought her happiness. I massaged her hips and then pressed my hand tightly against her crotch but she backed away.

  “You're not getting me started again now.” Her face was flushed and smiling.

  “Just thought I'd try. It wasn't very good in the water.”

  “It felt fine to me.” She brushed a mosquito off her arm and I tried to catch her but she stepped away. “Maybe we'll get another chance.”

  I didn't hear Tim when he returned. I was sprawled dozing uncomfortably across the bucket seats in the front but when I awoke Sylvia sounded upset. I looked out at them standing against the hood. Tim had blood all over his hands and shirt and Levi's.

  “What the hell happened?” I was sure he was badly injured.

  “When that guy left he let a Doberman out of the truck. A watchdog. He won't come back for him probably until tomorrow. But the dog scented me so I had to kill it.” He knelt and plunged the knife into the ground several times to clean it. The idea of killing a dog repelled me though I never liked Dobermans.

  Tim took his scrap of paper off the dashboard and began telling me that we would have to place the entire charge near the center conduit. A single large hole would loosen the entire structure of the dam aided by the force of the water.

  CHAPTER

  17

  THE DAY was passing at an unbearable crawl. By noon there had been eight hours of daylight and we would have to wait eight more to be safe. By mid-morning we had finished the sack of trash Tim had bought in Lolo Hot Springs: all the sort of food I hated—candy bars, pretzels, peanuts. I found the cheese I had eaten the morning I fished the Big Hole wedged in the back seat, but it was granular and so rank I couldn't get it past my nose. Out of boredom we finished a half pint of whiskey, the last of the alcohol. I mentally re-ate my porter-house of the day before. Tim split a spansule of meth and we each snorted half: then we had an argument about whether it was safe for me to go fishing and I finally agreed that it wasn't. The day had grown warm and humid and Sylvia sunned herself in her bikini in a small glade back in the pines. While Tim went off to make further studies of the dam I sat on the edge of the blanket and tried to talk to her. I wondered idly if Chief Joseph might have taken a hunting party up this particular small valley. At one time his band of Nez Percé had owned three thousand horses. That made them very hard for the Cavalry to chase because the Nez Percé could change to fresh mounts at will. Sylvia lay on her back with her. body glistening with Coppertone. Her sunglasses reflected the light like mirrors
but I supposed that she had her eyes closed. I placed my palm on the middle of her tummy.

  “Please don't.” Her politeness goaded me and I pulled the bottom of her bikini down until my fingers were against the hair. “I wish you wouldn't do that.” I pulled the suit down even further marveling at how white her skin was contrasted with her slight tan. “Timmy might come.” She sat up and took off her glasses.

  “He just left to make a diagram.” I kissed her but she pushed me away and lay back down. I could still see the top of her sex and I quickly pulled the suit down to her knees. She stiffened. “Turn over.” She didn't move so I rolled her over and pulled the bathing suit off her feet. I lay between her legs which I forced outward and kissed her until I could no longer bear it.

  “Please hurry.” Again the politness. But I was so maniacally excited that it didn't take very long. I quickly pulled up my Levi's and walked back to the car. I thought my heart would burst and my limbs were shaking.

  At the dam Tim was busy with his tablet and pen. I took off my clothes and dove into the backwater but got out as rapidly as possible. The water was no more than forty degrees and I drank deeply as I surfaced. Tim's diagram was very elaborate but I knew he had had some training in demolitions. It would be bad indeed if very many of our disenchanted veterans decided to apply their knowledge. I thought of that building at the University of Wisconsin. Down at the mouth of the canyon above the Clearwater new thunderheads were building up. I dressed and we jogged back to the car not wanting to get wet. Sylvia only appeared after it began raining again. She said she had been asleep. I was on the verge of weeping when she got into the car. All my maudlin propensities temporarily overcame me. She wore Tim's mottled blue cowboy shirt over her bikini and her skin still shone with the suntan oil and its scent pervaded the car.

  I had two joints and we passed one of them among us while Tim pointed out the subtleties of his sketch. Everything was running out. Sylvia announced that she had dropped the ID tab in the grass in front of the car. She sounded proud and conspiratorial. We rolled the windows up tight and started the car and heater because the rain and wind had suddenly turned cold. We smoked the second joint and went on a laughing jag. Here we were at the end of the road with not many hours before we would bring the whole wonderful thing off. We gibbered at one another and laughed hysterically over the silliest insubstantial jokes.

  Tim admitted that he made a lot of money from fencing the drugs that he stole from the hospital with a friend, everything from Seconal to morphine to Demerol to Thorazine to ordinary Darvon. They peddled to patients at exorbitant prices. One of the patients had died but he would have died anyway. Sylvia told the story of her first date with Tim and how he was making love to her before she was even quite sure what he was doing. And I told the story about how I talked to a psychiatrist and assured him nothing was wrong with me when meanwhile I had torn the phonebook from his desk into confetti-sized pieces.

  But then the sky got much darker though it was only mid-afternoon and the wind blew so hard that the spruce branches were swept off the car and trailer. The rain let up after a half hour but the wind was still violent and cold. Tim watched the weather changes closely and grew morose.

  “We can start now.” He got out of the car and began untying the tarpaulin knots on the trailer but came back to get his jacket.

  “I think we should wait until dark.” I exchanged glances with Sylvia but my worries vanished for a moment when I looked at her eyes which looked too close together a week ago but now seemed so flawless. I thought Tim was in a Seconal-speed daze and I wanted him to relax before evening when the real work would begin.

  “No.” He sat there staring out the window and it appeared he was very near an overdose or perhaps more depressed than I had ever seen him. But then just as suddenly his spirits picked up and we chattered for another fifteen minutes while Sylvia brushed back our hair and made pigtails with rubber bands from her purse partly because we didn't want the hair blown into our faces by the wind and partly because we decided to be Indians. She drew large rings around our eyes and mouths with lipstick and three vertical streaks on our cheeks down to our chins. We were very happy.

  It took seven trips apiece to get all the fertilizer and kerosene and the case of dynamite to the dam. I was cold, wet and exhausted but Tim seemed to pick up energy with each trip. The sky had grown even darker and the clouds were rolling only a thousand feet or so above our heads. Sylvia walked along with us in my leather jacket which was growing dark and wet with the rain which had begun to fall again. I begged Tim when he started to dig along the conduit on the face of the dam to wait until evening but he said there was no point in it. There was a small roll of powder fuse and I thought of kicking it over into the backwater but was unable to move.

  We were interrupted by the appearance of the cattle. Sylvia was frightened by one especially belligerent yearling bull who came halfway out on the dam swinging his horns and bellowing at us. I was frankly ready for a retreat but Tim ran at the bull with the shovel and smacked him hard against the neck and it ran off bawling. I felt stupid and cowardly again. I lowered the bags of nitrogen down to Tim who placed five on each side of the conduit. Then he clambered up the bank and we sat there smoking cigarettes with our backs to the wind. The noise of the water was too loud for talk. We both had our hands on Sylvia's shoulders. On the far bank the cattle were watching us with studied curiosity and I wondered how we would get them out of the way when we set off the charge. I didn't want a cow on my bloody hands. Tim started walking back to the car and we followed. I somehow wanted a bigger part in what we were doing but I felt inept and nearly comatose. It was hard for me to believe that I was at a dam near Orofino, Idaho, and what's more was in the preparatory stages of blowing the goddamn thing to pieces.

  In the car Tim was cold and abrupt. He took his pliers from the glove compartment and worked them nervously with a steady clacking.

  “Sylvia, turn the car around and keep it going. And stay here.”

  “I want to see the explosion.”

  He paused a moment then nodded agreement. A string of cattle passed down the trail in front of us in the direction of the ranch. “Those fucking cows. I don't want to blow up any cows.” The scar had grown more livid in the cold, wet wind: a faded blue laurel that the government would rid him of free of charge. “While I set up I want you to take the shovel and keep the cattle away.”

  We had walked halfway back to the dam when Sylvia called out to us. She had managed to get the trailer stuck in the ditch on the other side of the road. We had to uncouple the trailer and lift it out of the ditch. Sylvia murmured her apologies several times but Tim said nothing. I felt terminally disconnected with the way things kept going wrong: first the Doberman with the slit throat then the omnipresent cattle and now the stuck car. When we got it straightened around Tim stationed Sylvia about a hundred yards from the dam behind a big stump where she would be safe but still able to see the explosion. We giggled at how absurd our painted faces looked and Sylvia wanted to touch them up as it had begun to rain again and when we wiped the water from our eyes we smeared the lipstick. But Tim jogged down to the dam and I stayed just long enough to get my make-up corrected.

  Tim slit open the tops of the fertilizer bags and rearranged them in the trench he had dug along above the conduit. I handed down the kerosene with a wary eye out for the cattle. He soaked down each of the ten bags and handed the cans back up to me and scrambled up the bank waving me away. I walked back and stood by Sylvia while Tim wrapped the sticks of dynamite in a bunch and placed it between the double trench of fertilizer. He worked on his knees arranging the caps and unrolling the powder fuse. I started back down the slope but he waved me away again and covered the setup with loose dirt. Ideally, he had said, the bags should be placed further into the wall of the dam but the base was made out of logs and stones and was impossible to dig through.

  Tim signaled and I ran down to him.

  “Take this back to t
he trunk.” There was at least half of a case of dynamite left.

  “We don't want to get caught with this.” He nodded and picked up the case and threw it in the backwater but it floated. Then he threw in the spool of powder fuse and it sank. We had to shout to each other to be heard over the roar of water. There was a large group of cattle up on the hill and I wondered how they would get back after we blew up the dam. But the stream would probably be shallow enough for them to wade it after the backwater flowed through. I thought proudly that by tomorrow steelhead would begin making their way up past where we stood on their spring run.

  “Well here we go.” We shook hands and he punched my shoulder. I was looking down at the setup and the fuse didn't seem very long but I didn't know what its burn rate was. “Go up by Sylvia and keep your heads down.”

  I walked slowly toward Sylvia wanting somehow to think of a further delay. The cold wind depressed me and the rain stung my face. Sylvia's smile warmed me somewhat and I gave her a kiss. Then we turned to Tim who was waving. We waved back and Sylvia threw him a kiss. He raised his arms and clenched his fists together in the victory sign. Then he took out his lighter and held it to the fuse.

  What I saw then at first didn't register on me I suppose because of the possible horror. The cattle were coming in single file down the path on the side of the hill and were heading slowly for the dam. Tim had just dropped the lighted fuse and had begun running across the dam toward us when he saw me headed toward him. He turned around and saw the cattle and ran back toward them pausing to stomp out the fuse. He took out the pistol and fired it in the air but the sound was puny and lost in the water and didn't dissuade the cattle. He picked up the shovel and headed toward them swinging it in a semi-circle. I began to head back to Sylvia when I noticed I couldn't see the white fuse which had been so plainly visible before. I knew suddenly that his stomp hadn't put it out. I screamed and waved. I saw him lower the shovel and turn from the first of the cattle, a cow and a calf, who were drawing closer. Then he looked down at the place the fuse should have been and started running. I reached Sylvia in a few seconds and her hands were covering her face. I stumbled and fell sideways. I saw that Tim must have tried to stomp on the fuse again because he hadn't cleared the dam when the blast came.