by Simmons, Dan
Gutzon Borglum, on the other hand, stands where he was, legs apart, his fists on his hips, staring at the approaching cloud of grit and dust and flying rock like a pugilist whose turn it is to await his opponent’s blow.
The Abraham Lincoln Head explodes above and around Paha Sapa.
Reacting from some atavistic survival instinct, he throws himself flat on the narrow ridge even as the cliff comes apart above and beneath him.
Lincoln’s heavy brow comes loose in one piece and falls past Paha Sapa, just feet away, with a horrible mass greater than a house, heavier than a battleship. The pupils of Lincoln’s eyes—carved granite rods three feet long that give the appearance of a real eye pupil glinting from a distance below—go firing across the valley like granite rockets, one cutting through the mushrooming dust cloud to pierce Borglum’s studio like a spear.
Lincoln’s nose also severs in one piece and takes off a seven-foot stretch of the ledge just inches away from Paha Sapa’s outstretched and wildly gripping fingers.
The next two blasts deafen Paha Sapa and throw him six feet into the air. He lands half off the ledge, legs dangling over hundreds of feet of empty, dust-filled air, but the bleeding fingers of his left hand find a rim and he grips and grunts and scrambles back up amid the pelting of rock bits and blasts of unspeakable noise. His shirt and work pants have been ripped to shreds. He is bleeding in a hundred spots from rock splinter strikes, and his right eye is swollen shut.
But he is alive and—illogically, treacherously, hypocritically—he fights to stay on the collapsing ledge amid the chaos and to stay alive.
How can this be?
The final crate of dynamite is inches from his face. It should have gone off with the others. Has the delay fuse in the detonator been damaged?
Paha Sapa’s survival instincts tell him to shove the crate off the ledge before it does explode. Let it join the exploding, sliding, roiling, dust-clouded chaos below. In that fraction of a second, Paha Sapa confronts the full extent of his cowardice: he’d rather die from being hanged in a few weeks than be blown to atoms right now.
But he does not push the crate over the edge of the avalanching cliff.
Instead, Paha Sapa tears his nails as he claws the boards off the top of the crate. He has to know why it hasn’t detonated.
The reason, he sees through the enclosing, choking dust, is that there is no dynamite in the crate—not a single stick—although there was the night before when he hid this final crate here and carefully attached the interior detonator and detonator box wires.
There is just a single slip of paper.
Paha Sapa sees his name written on it and the few sentences scrawled beneath, the words not quite legible in the swirling dust, but the handwriting quite recognizable. There is no doubt as the dust occludes everything and shuts off Paha Sapa’s breathing as well as vision. The note is written in his son Robert’s bold but careful script.
The ledge beneath him gives way.
PAHA SAPA SNAPS AWAKE.
Sleeping, dozing… impossible! A second Vision? No. No. Absolutely not. Just a dream. No. How could… one can’t fall asleep in the middle of… three nights with no sleep, the long days of work, the heat. Long Hair’s ghost babbling, lulling him. No, not possible. Wait, what has he missed?
The Will Rogers twang of Governor Tom Berry is just wrapping up. The loudspeaker echoes off itself and the three intact Heads, the intact rock field where TR is meant to rise. Borglum begins to speak. The red flag is in his hand again… no, for the first time.
Paha Sapa wonders if he has died. Perhaps Hamlet was right—to sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub. Death would be welcome if it were dreamless, but to live this over and over in dreams…
Borglum is explaining that we—the royal we, the unnamed sixty workers and he—use dynamite to clear the surface rock but do all the actual carving by hand.
My ass, thinks Paha Sapa. He looks down. The cables are not connected to the detonators. The dream hangs on him like a wet, dead chimpanzee. His head pounds with pain and he feels as though he might have to vomit over the rim of the ledge… the ledge that crumbled under him only seconds ago. The vertigo still inhabits his inner ear and belly.
Borglum is raising the red flag.
Paha Sapa threads the wires, wraps them, presses down the Bakelite covers. His scarred, blunted hands have done this a thousand times, and he allows them to do it now without his intervention. The only intrusion he allows his mind is to check the color of the cables. Black. The demonstration charge. Wired, the voltage cranked up in four turns to the right, safety clicked left and off, plunger raised against the drag of coil. Paha Sapa keeps his right hand on the plunger and raises the binoculars with his left hand.
Unlike in the dream, Gutzon Borglum does not turn his back on the president or wave the red flag dramatically, as if he were a flagman at the Indianapolis 500. Borglum’s left arm is along the back of the president’s car seat, his body half turned toward the president, eyes lifted to the cliff, as he casually lets the flag drop.
BAM, BAM, BAMBAMBAM.
Paha Sapa has no physical memory of pushing the detonator box plunger, but it is pushed, the charges fired as fused.
To Paha Sapa’s blast-deafened ears, these quarter-charge reports are more like rifle shots than dynamite blasts. The amount of rock blown out is purely symbolic, the dust cloud negligible. But the audience below applauds. Oddly, President Roosevelt offers his hand to Borglum and the two men shake as if the outcome of the blast had been in question.
There is movement above Paha Sapa. Lincoln Borglum and his workers have swung the boom, lifted the flag. Thomas Jefferson ponders the blue sky. The sounds of the real applause and the delayed and overlapping amplified applause pitter-patter on the stone faces above and around Paha Sapa.
Borglum has leaned close to the microphone again. His tone is imperative; he is giving the president of the United States a direct order:
—I want you, Mr. President, to dedicate this memorial as a shrine to democracy; to call upon the people of the earth for one hundred thousand years to come to read the thought and to see what manner of men struggled here to establish self-determined government in the western world.
Applause again. Everything sounds very, very far away to Paha Sapa, whose hands are threading and wrapping the bare leads of the gray-painted cable to the terminals of the second detonator box. Borglum’s phrasing—“to call upon the people of the earth”—sounds familiar, derivative, to Paha Sapa as he cranks the detonator four times to the right, building the charge. Yes, he knows… it echoes the translated opening to the Berlin Olympic Games earlier this month: I call upon the youth of the world…
And it is just like Borglum to mention not the faces he’s not even finished carving, but the “shrine of democracy” and all its reading material tucked away in the Hall of Records that’s now just a test bore in the unknown canyon behind the heads.
One hundred thousand years of wasichu domination of the Black Hills. He pulls the detonator plunger up against its friction until it clicks into place. Ready.
FDR was not scheduled or invited to speak—Paha Sapa cannot remember if Abraham Lincoln had been invited to speak at Gettysburg (Robert could tell him), but he knows that the sixteenth president hadn’t been the main speaker, and now this thirty-second president was not invited to speak at all—but, overcome with emotion or politics (just as Paha Sapa expected), Franklin Delano Roosevelt reaches out and pulls the heavy circle of the microphone closer.
The familiar tones from radio, the reassuring cadence—still sounding as if it is on radio due to the speakers and echoes—blasts up and out from Doane Mountain to Mount Rushmore and then to the world.
—… I had seen the photographs, I had seen the drawings, and I had talked with those who are responsible for this great work, and yet I had no conception, until about ten minutes ago, not only of its magnitude, but also its permanent beauty and importance.
… I think
that we can perhaps meditate on those Americans of ten thousand years from now… meditate and wonder what our descendants—and I think they will still be here—will think about us. Let us hope… that they will believe we have honestly striven every day and generation to preserve a decent land to live in and a decent form of government to operate under.
The applause is louder now and Paha Sapa can hear it before the speakers echo it around him. There are some cheers from the mostly Republican crowd. Paha Sapa lifts the binoculars again and catches FDR turning away from the beaming Borglum and waving that oft-parodied wave to the crowd, the magnificent head back, the grin locked and lacking only the cigarette holder and cigarette to make it whole. Paha Sapa sees that poor Senator Norbeck’s towel has slipped—the dream tries to slide in with its sickening reality—but the cancer-mauled creator and protector of Mount Rushmore is smiling a corpse’s smile.
Time seems to twist out from under Paha Sapa. Has he dozed again? Is he going mad? He lifts the sun-heated binoculars.
Borglum is leaning almost casually against the touring car. The sun has heated that metal as well and Paha Sapa can see how Borglum is using his white sleeves to protect his arms against the burning steel (is it bulletproof?) of the car’s black door. More VIPs are milling around the automobile now and frowning Secret Service men hold some back.
The microphone has been removed—or, rather, radio announcers are babbling into theirs, but the speakers here are not carrying their broadcasts—so there is no way that Paha Sapa can hear what the president and the Boss are saying. But he does.
Roosevelt’s voice is relaxed, satisfied, genuinely curious.
—Where are you going to put Teddy?
Borglum half turns and points to the left of Paha Sapa as he explains that the TR head will go in that lighter-granite area between Jefferson and the emerging Lincoln head.
—I have it all planned out in my studio.
Borglum is inviting the president up to the studio—right then. It would be like Borglum to expect the president of the United States to accept the impromptu invitation and to hang around while Borglum grills some steaks for everyone later.
Roosevelt is smiling and speaking.
—I will come back someday to look this over more fully.
Borglum is smiling and nodding, obviously believing FDR. Paha Sapa knows his boss, literally inside and out. How could someone not want to return to Mount Rushmore? Besides, there are so many more dedications ahead—the Abraham Lincoln head, probably next year in 1937, then Teddy Roosevelt, of course, by 1940 if Borglum’s schedule is kept to (and Paha Sapa knows that Borglum also expects Franklin Roosevelt to remain president for three or four more terms, at least), and then the Hall of Records before 1950 or so…
Paha Sapa looks up, squinting into the sunlight. Lincoln Borglum and his men have folded the huge flag away, secured the boom arm and pulleys, and have left for the staircase. Lincoln had better hurry if he wants to be introduced… the fringes of the crowd are breaking up, the VIPs have left their seats, the president’s Secret Service men and aides are clearing a path for the automobile.
This is the time, Paha Sapa realizes. Now. This second.
The detonator box is between his knees, the plunger still raised.
He is still sitting that way an hour later when he raises his head, lifts the binoculars, and looks down.
Almost everyone is gone. The president’s car is long gone. The parking lot is almost empty. The reviewing stand is being dismantled.
There’s motion above Paha Sapa and he looks up to see Gutzon Borglum dropping toward him. Of all the hundred or so workers who’ve learned to move across the face and faces of Mount Rushmore, no one floats with a lighter or surer touch than Gutzon Borglum.
The Boss drops to the ledge and steps out of the bosun’s chair and safety harness. He looks down at the detonator box still secured and armed between Paha Sapa’s knees.
—I knew you wouldn’t do it. Where did you hide the dynamite crates?
Keeping his right hand on the plunger, Paha Sapa points out the various hiding places on and under and around the various faces.
Borglum shakes his head—he is wearing his broad-brimmed hat, the red kerchief is still around his neck—and sits on the ledge, propping one powerful forearm on his knee.
Paha Sapa has to fight the hollowness in him in order to speak at all.
—How long have you known what I was going to do?
Borglum shows his nicotine-stained teeth.
—Don’t you know? I’ve always known what you were planning to do, Paha Sapa. But I’ve also always known you wouldn’t do it.
The statement makes no sense but Paha Sapa has the urge to ask the Boss how he learned his, Paha Sapa’s, true name. The detonator is still fully charged. The plunger is still raised.
—Paha Sapa, you remember our meeting in the Homestake Mine. The handshake?
—Of course.
Paha Sapa’s voice sounds as weak and hollow and defeated as he feels.
—You’re so damned arrogant, Old Man Black Hills. You think you’re the only person in the world with the gift you have. Well… you’re not. You got those bits of my past when we shook hands that day—I felt them flow into you—but I got bits of your past and future. This day has been as clear to me as our shared memories of you counting coup on Custer or the face of your tunkašila.
Paha Sapa looks at Borglum and blinks and tries to understand this but cannot. Borglum laughs, but not cruelly, not out of some victory. It’s a tired but strangely satisfied sound.
—You know, Paha Sapa, that doctor you snuck off to see in Casper is a damned quack. Everyone knows that. You need to see my doctor in Chicago.
Paha Sapa has no reply to that. Borglum looks up at the Washington head, then at Jefferson, then at the white field of granite that will be Teddy Roosevelt.
—I think the president was really impressed. Now I’ve got to go beg the Park Service for another hundred thousand dollars so that I can finish everything. They’ll think that I’m lying when I say I can get everything done with only a hundred thousand bucks, and they’ll be right… but it’ll keep us going.
Borglum cranes his red-kerchiefed neck to look up at Abraham Lincoln looming over them.
—One of the things I saw that day in the mine, Paha Sapa, is that in nineteen forty-one I’ll… well, we’ll see if that comes true. I believed in all the rest, but I don’t have to believe in that if I don’t want to. Shall we take those damned contact wires off now?
Paha Sapa says nothing as Borglum undoes the wires from the detonator box terminals. The Boss tosses the gray-painted cables aside and then sets the detonator box gently next to the other one. In his place, Paha Sapa might have tossed the detonator over the side of the cliff, but the boxes are expensive and Borglum is a man who watches every penny when he can. Not in his own life, of course, but for the Mount Rushmore job.
With the detonator harmless, Paha Sapa finally can speak again.
—Are the police on the way, Mr. Borglum? Waiting below?
Borglum looks at him.
—You know there are no police waiting, Paha Sapa. But I need you to tell my son where all the crates of dynamite are. Are they usable on the job?
—Most are. I have some more crates in the shed next to my house that aren’t so good. Someone should check those and get rid of them.
Borglum nods. He pulls a second and smaller red handkerchief from his pocket and mops the sweat from his forehead.
—Yeah, Lincoln will take care of those too. We’ll check the sticks in these boxes and store them up in the powder shed for now. You going to take a little vacation… go away for a little while?
Paha Sapa understands nothing.
—You’ll let me go?
Borglum shrugs. Paha Sapa realizes, not for the first time, how powerful the sculptor’s hands, forearms, shoulders, and personality are.
—It’s a free country. You’re overdue for a real vacation. I’m
gonna have the boys work on the Lincoln head here through September and start the serious honeycombing for Teddy Roosevelt in October. But when you come back, I’ll have a job for you.
—You have to be kidding.
The quality of Borglum’s grin and gaze shows that he is not.
—I don’t think you should be powderman anymore, Old Man, although I know it’d be all right if you were. I thought maybe you should work with Lincoln on supervising the drilling and bumping on the TR head, then work with the second team to start the serious work on the Hall of Records and the Entablature. We’ll talk about it when you get back from vacation.
They stand then, both men easy on the narrow ledge with nothing between them and two hundred feet of clear air other than their experience and sense of balance. The long August day is shading into a golden evening that—suddenly, sharply, inexplicably—feels more like the benediction of autumn than the constant test of endlessly blazing summer.
Borglum is slipping into his bosun’s chair and safety strap and Paha Sapa looks up to see a second bosun’s chair dropping down for him on its almost invisible steel wire.
24
Along the Greasy Grass
September 1936
PAHA SAPA HAS THE SIDECAR LOADED AND IS READY TO LEAVE at dawn, but Lincoln Borglum and a work crew show up early to check out the extra stored dynamite and transport it elsewhere. The younger Borglum knows what’s going on and acts embarrassed, almost apologetic, but powdermen Clyde “Spot” Denton and Alfred Berg, as well as Red Anderson, Howdy Peterson, Palooka Payne, and the other men carrying the crates out to the waiting truck are just confused.
