Canyon Secret

by Patrick Lee

  The Garden Wall, a shale rock face from which the Sun Road was carved, is a long steep slope eventually rising to sheer cliffs some one-thousand vertical feet above the road cut. The extreme nature of the surrounding environment often forced survey and construction crews to hang suspended from old hemp ropes. The western leg of the Transmountain Highway reached Logan Pass on October 20, 1928. The new road from the west to Logan Pass opened to car traffic the following June.

  Final touches of the completion of the Sun Road were made on July 7, 1933 at a total cost of one-million seven-hundred thousand dollars. With masonry guardrails constructed from the very same rock excavated for the roadbed, the Sun Road stands as a tribute not only to civil engineering, but also to aesthetic beauty. Retaining walls blend into the hill and its contours snake in and out of view, making Going to the Sun one of the least obtrusive paved roads in the country. Opening and dedication ceremonies were held on July 15, 1933. More than four thousand visitors watched the ceremonies including delegates from formerly hostile tribes of Blackfoot, Flathead and Kootenai Indians who gathered for a ceremonial offering of peace and passing of the pipe. The celebration marked twenty years of planning and building.

  Tomas stopped reading the travel guide and laid it on his lap. He’d picked up the guide at the visitor center upon entering Glacier Park. As they passed through the first turn after reaching the loop on the Sun Road, he carefully looked out the side window of Clifford’s 1949 Ford Sedan. He spoke so quietly that Clifford leaned his right ear toward the middle of the bench seat just to hear, “Pretty hard to believe that them men hung over the sides swingin’ on ropes. And we think we work on a scary job.”

  Without answering, Clifford shifted back into second gear as the road grade climbed. A station wagon stuffed with kids hanging out of the windows crawled by going down the road. Tomas continued with his nervous chatter, “Do you think somebody like us twenty years from now will be lookin’ at Hungry Horse Dam and wonder how we did stuff?” He didn’t wait for Clifford to answer, “And Clifford, can you imagine workin’ that hard for a buck fifteen an hour? Holy smokes.”

  Clifford pulled his car to a stop in a pull out area where a group of people stood outside of their cars. He shook his head as he watched a little girl feed part of her sandwich to a black bear while her dad took a picture of her. Another bear sat and begged for food from another group of kids about twenty feet away. “They shouldn’t do that. Bears aren’t meant to be tame. Someone’s going to get hurt.” Clifford put the car in gear and pulled out back onto the road.

  Once they arrived at Logan Pass, the two men walked up the wooden stairs and joined others looking west toward Mt. Reynolds and Mt. Oberlein. It was mid-August and snow still peppered the tops of the mountains. Tomas took a drink from his canteen and marveled at the beauty of the scenery. “I ain’t ever seen nothin’ like this, Clifford. Thanks a million for bringin’ me along. I won’t never forget this. Never.”

  Thunder clouds clapped overhead, and the wind increased its pressure against Clifford’s long, black hair as it tossed straight back. He managed a smile before he spoke, “It is beautiful. Too many people now. I like the view better from East Glacier. The Blackfeet call it the Front. It is an important spiritual place for the Blackfeet people. It is known as part of the Backbone of the World, the Rocky Mountains. Peaks have Blackfeet names like Morning Star, Little Plume, Running Crane, Spotted Eagle, Elkcalf Bullshoe, and Curly Bear.”

  Tomas stared at his friend and waited for more. Clifford turned and walked down the dirt path toward his car. Tomas shrugged his shoulders, took another drink of water, and followed his friend to the parking lot.

  As they passed through the tunnel below Logan Pass, Tomas silently reflected on the information about the construction of the four-hundred foot tunnel. The men excavated six-thousand yards of material just to open up a safe bench in order to work. All the supplies were hauled down a hundred foot trail lying at nearly a forty-five degree angle. The men carried fifty pounds of dynamite at a time down this trail and a ladder. Several men looked at the ladder and walked off the job. “Clifford. Do you think you would’ve climbed down that ladder with fifty pounds of dynamite on your back?”

  “No. I don’t like working with powder. Some kids in Browning got blown up once from powder. The highway workers used it to blast rock, and the kids got into it at night. One of them was my little cousin.”

  Tomas felt the mood change in Clifford the closer they got to Browning and the festivities of the North American Indian Days. He wondered if it was going to work out for Clifford bringing a white friend to the Indian celebrations. “Is it okay that I’m along for the Pow Wow Days?”

  A few seconds passed before Clifford responded. “It will be okay. I am nervous about seeing a few cousins. That’s all. Some people call me an apple.”

  “Apple? What’s that mean?”

  “Red on the outside. White on the inside. I get called apple because I left the reservation and live and work with the whites. I am used to it. My cousins are good until they get drunk. Then we will leave before trouble starts.”

  Clifford made a right turn at the small tourist town of St. Mary’s and exited the boundaries of Glacier National Park. Clifford guided the car past two tourists parked in the middle of the road. Tomas compared Clifford’s story to his own experience when he returned to McQueen earlier in the summer. He also worried about the reaction of his friends and neighbors once his family moved from Butte. “I think the people in Butte call me banana because I left Butte during the strike.”

  A welcomed laugh jumped from Clifford, “Banana?”

  “Ya. Yellow on the inside and yellow on the outside.” They both laughed and greeted the heavy rain and lightning storm that raced across the plains. Through the windshield wipers, Clifford embraced the feelings one knows when the familiar surroundings of a hometown open the memories of childhood. Memories released as the car crossed the bridge outside East Glacier that swept away his parents and uncle. The three white crosses on the guardrail swarmed every corner of his senses.

  Back in Martin City, Hannah joined Mikhail in his Chevy to go out and eat dinner in Whitefish with Bud and his wife Sara. She smiled at him across the front seat before she said anything. “And how was work today, Mr. Mikhail Anzich?”

  He returned her smile and visually canvassed her outfit from head to toe. Mikhail engaged the clutch and his car jerked forward. The engine killed. Hannah laughed and managed to say, “Maybe we might get there in better shape if you look ahead instead of at me.”

  Mikhail turned his head back and let out a weak laugh. “I guess yer right.” He restarted the engine and ground the gears as he shifted from first to second gear. As he glanced at her, he wondered what kind of dress she had on. She seemed to wear something new each time they got together. And her hair looked different too. “I like your new hair.”

  “Oh, it’s the same hair. It’s not new. I just got it cut real short. I saw it on a lady in the July issue of Look Magazine. So I cut out the picture and took it to my friend Judy. She cuts my hair in exchange for going to the movies free of charge. Glad you noticed. That might be worth somethin’ later on tonight.”

  Mikhail glanced straight ahead as he carefully negotiated the hairpin turn through the Berne Park area of Highway 2. What did she mean, later on tonight? “Our hair is about the same amount of long.”

  “Same amount of long? How about same length.” She playfully slapped him on his huge bicep and immediately realized how hard his muscles felt. Her thoughts quickly shifted across the river to the passenger train that zoomed by on the other side. “How about taking a train ride with me sometime?”

  Mikhail noticed the Great Northern Streamliner moving smoothly along the tracks toward Whitefish. “Okay.”

  “There you go again, Mikhail. You’re such a blabbermouth. I can’t seem to get a word in edgewise.”

  A predictable short-lived laugh preceded his reply, “Where to?” Hannah turned a
nd faced him, “How about from Coram to Whitefish?”

  “Okay. How’ll we get back?”

  She turned and looked out her window at the train. “We can take the train back the next morning.”

  “Where would we stay—” He stopped in the middle of his sentence. They’d need to spend the night together. She continued to surprise him with something new about herself. “Oh, a, that’d be fine.”

  Hannah smiled and congratulated herself for following through on her plan. It was time to move their relationship along, and she knew she would need to take the lead. “Good. Maybe we can pick sometime in September. The leaves will be changing and everything is so beautiful at that time of year. Besides, it’ll give me time to look into a nice hotel in Whitefish.”

  The drive through Columbia Falls was a blur as Hannah’s words about a hotel overwhelmed any other thought that might enter his head. Mikhail stopped in front of Bud and Sara Reynold’s house. He noticed a new house across the street with a for sale sign in the front yard. His thoughts roared toward his plans for buying a house in Columbia Falls for his family. He’d talk to Bud about the neighborhood. “What a great place this house would be if it worked out. Big yard, two stories, lots of maple trees, and close to the construction site of the Aluminum Plant. And we’d be neighbors with Bud and his family.”

  “Mikhail. Are we goin’ to sit here all night? Or should we join Bud and Sara standin’ outside of their car waitin’ for us?”

  “Sorry. I, I daydreamed there.” He opened his door and walked around the back of his car and opened Hannah’s door. She purposefully brushed against him as she walked by, and she playfully raised one eyebrow. Her clean, flowery scent floated by and stayed with him. Thoughts of buying a house became a distant memory. Hannah Holley took over his thoughts for the time being.

  Ted Hughes finished his first full week working undercover getting to know David Sednick. Previous summers between college quarters, Hughes worked as a laborer at Grand Coulee Dam. Memories of that experience vividly came back to life. The hard work, long hours, and aching muscles reminded him of why he stayed in college. Little did he realize back in 1942 that after getting his degree and working for the FBI for ten years, he’d be back tearing apart frames and working his tail off on Hungry Horse Dam. His self-pity left as David stopped in front of him. “Good week of work there, Hughes. You been around a little. I can tell.”

  “Ya. I spent some time on Grand Coulee years ago.

  “Probably too tired for a couple of beers, huh?”

  Hughes didn’t expect to get this close this soon. “I imagine I could stand a couple. Maybe after a shower.”

  David nodded as his dented hard hat slowly tipped forward on his head. “How about up at Coram at the Dew Drop?”

  “Good enough. About 6:00?”

  “See ya then.”

  David walked away and promised himself to go easy with his drinking tonight. Hughes seemed like a guy he could get to know. He chased everybody else away when he got drunk and obnoxious.

  After he set his lunch bucket and clipboard in the front seat of his truck, he took off his hard hat and flipped it on the floor. He mumbled as he checked out the inside of his truck. “First chance I get I gotta wash this goddamn thing. It’s filthy.” On the drive down the haul road, David sauntered back in his mind to some friends he had back in McQueen. It came easy then to keep friends. Nobody had nothin’. Nobody cared. They just had fun and hung around.

  Moonshine grappa wine changed all of that. Moonshine grappa and girls. Two of his friends went to Pine Hills in Miles City for burglary. He got away that night, and his friends didn’t squeal on him. It wasn’t the same after they got out of Miles City. They’d changed. He owed them for not squealing. Twice they beat the shit out of him for not paying them on time. One of them found out about David messing with his girlfriend while he was in Miles City. David started to become a loner. To make his blackmail payments to his ex-friends, he swindled his grandparents out of their savings. This was his biggest mistake. Everybody in McQueen seemed to find out about it. He became a full-time loner. After twenty years, people still never forgave him.

  Tonight he’d be different. He needed a friend. The rest of the world around him turned to shit. It was time to turn on the old charm. Hughes might be his last chance. Everyone else wrote him off.

  After they ordered their dinners, Bud and Mikhail discussed the technical aspects of one of the highlights of Hungry Horse Dam. Sara and Hannah excused themselves and headed for the restroom in the Cadillac Hotel.

  Bud reminisced about his first job on the Dam project as he explained the details of that work to Mikhail. “The first construction activity on Hungry Horse Dam was the work we did on the diversion tunnel. It was during the 1947-48 winter season. The engineers called this shaft-and-tunnel the morning-glory type of spillway. We lined that entire tunnel with concrete. It was supposed to pass a flow of fifty-thousand cubic feet per second.”

  Mikhail took a long drink of the delicious, dark coffee and set his cup back down in the saucer. “How much rock and dirt did you remove to make room for that size of a tunnel?”

  After a short swallow, Bud set his half-empty glass of Pabst Blue Ribbon down on the cloth-lined table. “I think the excavating crews removed just about thirty-thousand cubic yards of material in order to construct the eleven-hundred foot long tunnel.”

  “How will the tunnel work once we finish up in a month?”

  “The way I understand it, the overflow water from the reservoir will plunge over the rest of the spillway and drop about four-hundred feet. It’ll discharge through the spillway outlet structure five-hundred fifty feet downstream from the powerhouse.”

  The women returned to the table, adjusted their cloth napkins back on their laps, and toasted each other’s beer glasses.

  Bud took a slow glance in their direction and asked, “What’s that all about?”

  His wife giggled and answered, “I bet Hannah in the bathroom that when we sat down, you two’d still be jawing about that damn old tunnel. And I was right.” She toasted Hannah’s glass again and laughed.

  Bud shook his head, looked over at Mikhail, and continued, “An outlet system provides three ninety-six diameter outlet pipes in order to regulate the flow of water to meet downstream requirements. In addition, these outlet pipes provide a means for rapidly lowering the reservoir in case of an impending flood.”

  Sara gasped before she spoke, “Stop, Bud Reynolds. Enough of that tunnel talk. Talk about us for a while. Look how good we look tonight.” The effects of her second beer allowed her to playfully turn the conversation to include all four of them.

  The waitress returned to their table and delivered their garden salads. Bud didn’t appreciate being interrupted in his explanation of the Glory Hole to Mikhail. But as he looked at his wife, he noted to himself how nice she did look. “Okay, Sara. Let’s talk about you.” His sly smile and wink told Sara everything she wanted to hear. She still owned his heart and other important parts of his body. Bud knew what was good for him.

  He sat down on one of the wooden benches in the quonset hut, waited for the bus, and drank his third cup of thermos coffee. From across the room he heard Bob Stebbins yell, “Hey, Nolan. Grab yer gear and come with me.” Nolan used his favorite face muscles and mimicked the electrician superintendent to the delight of the men sitting near him. He grabbed his lunch bucket and hardhat and followed the short, stocky boss out to his pickup. He imitated the gorilla-walking gait Stebbins used as he exited the building. Nolan hung his arms low and swayed his body back and forth like a gorilla. Behind him he heard pockets of laughter rise up from various parts of the hut.

  Outside, Stebbins motioned John Nolan to his pickup. “I’d like you to ride with me up to the top and give me a hand unloadin’ all of this new telephone gear that I picked up at the post office.” Nolan flipped the remaining few drops of coffee from his plastic thermos cup into the gravel. Small bursts of dust jumped up at him. Th
e dry weather wore on, and even at 8:00 in the morning, the ground lacked moisture from any kind of dew. Nolan slowly climbed into the packed front seat. He threw a quick glance at the boxes crammed into the pickup bed and the front seat. Nolan looked out the back window as he spoke, “It’s a good goddamn thing I got a skinny ass, Bob. Otherwise, I’d be ridin’ the runnin’ board.”

  Stebbins grumbled something, spit the dark juice from the chaw in his cheek, and fired up the engine. “We’re goin’ to replace the whole goddamn setup this week, Nolan. New shit for the Truman press corps and the whole goddamn gang comin’ along with the president. I remember the first time I laid eyes on the switchboard we got from a war surplus sale. The equipment must’a been purchased sight unseen because it’d been a part of a multi-position switchboard and somebody took a hacksaw to the interconnecting cable. There it stood with a few hundred wires hanging out of the side, all unlabeled and they didn’t know what wire went where because there wasn’t no wiring diagram with the piece of junk.”

  Nolan blinked his eyes and subtly shook his head. To himself he asked, “What the hell he’s talking about. I got to bed around five and still got a pretty good load on.” He looked in Stebbin’s direction, “How in God’s good earth did you know where to splice and connect?”

  The truck lunged forward as the transmission shifted into third gear. “I worked for a phone company in California installin’ every kind of instrument. I took some instruction on how to read a wire diagram and how to repair switchboards.”

  “It’s still pretty damn interestin’ you was able to put in the phone system for this here Dam. Christ Almighty, there’s phones everywhere!”