1. July 15th, 1974

High in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico on a farmed plateau above Peñasco Valley, Alberto Romero’s sixty-four acre farm is more prosperous than its neighbors with its large, two story adobe house, a pile a split wood as large as the house itself and multiple out-buildings surrounded by fields of tall, Timothy grass. It is quiet in the mid-afternoon. Hawks patrol high thermals, hummingbirds flutter in wild roses twisted among juniper hedgerows and the only sound is a tractor working a distant field. The only activity takes place in a large barn behind the house. The nose of a battered half-ton blue Chevy pickup truck sticks out of the barn doors. Inside, two Anglo hippies are mucking out animal stalls. They are three quarters of the way down the aisle. The bed of the pickup truck is almost full of crushed straw and animal waste. They’ve both gotten use to the small.

Jake Gallagher is in his late thirties, laugh lines around his eyes, bushy eyebrows, bearded and tough. He skillfully gathers a pitchfork full of saturated hay and dumps it in the back of the pickup. He looks over at Dale, a younger version of himself but rail thin. Both men are dressed in dirty overalls, dark shirts and battered Stetson hats. Both are bearded. Dale has long hair, half-way down his back, tied in a ponytail. Jake’s hair is chopped off below the ears.

Dale says, “So for Aristotle you only understand what goodness is if you practice it. He believed that ethical knowledge isn’t precise knowledge, like logic and mathematics, but general knowledge like the knowledge of nutrition and exercise. It’s a practical discipline not a theoretical one.  You’ve actually got to become virtuous, just like you have to become good at sports, to understand it.”

“So, someone who behaves immorally isn’t to blame, because he simply doesn’t know any better, he doesn’t understand ethical behavior, because he doesn’t practice it” Jake answers as he swings another pitchfork load into the truck.

“A discus thrower can listen to all the lectures he wants, but until he has that discus in his hand and tries to throw it, he doesn’t understand discus throwing. It’s the same thing with ethical behavior.” After a pause, “Of course, someone might know what’s ethical and still choose to be bad,” Dale replies.

“But he also might not know and therefore be blameless,” Jake answers.

They work in silence until Dale says, “Nothing like talking the shit when you’re actually shoveling shit. I think if I ever taught philosophy again, I’d make the students muck out barns while we discussed the weighty imponderables of classical philosophy.”

“You miss being a professor?”

Dale thinks for a moment. “I miss the recognition, the deference, the starry-eyed college girls, being at the top of my game. You ever miss being a physicist?”

“Nah. For a defense contractor? Living with a woman who only cared about looking a little better than her girlfriends?  Don’t miss a moment of it.”

“It’s not so easy out here.”

“No. It’s not.”

“Fuck, I don't know. I thought I was doing okay before it went to hell.”

“The well?”

“Yeah. $1,500 ‘cause I trusted a Texas wild catter. You know he spent three days drilling but couldn’t get through the rocky moraine under this thin layer of topsoil. Just disappeared one night with my deposit. But no fuckin’ well water.”

“Locals use an impact drill.”

“I know. That’s what gets me the most. It’s my own fault. Just rushed right in, trying to take advantage of what I thought was a good deal. And I’m a fucking good poker player. I should a known better.”

     Dale throws his pitchfork in the back of the truck, climbs into the cab and backs further into the barn. As they tackle the last few stalls, Jake says, “You know Romero thinks we’re nuts. A bag of chemical fertilizer will do as much good as a truckload of this shit they say.”

“Yah, but our land goin’ to keep getting better with more compost, richer soil, and years from now our descendants will thank us for it while the Romeros wonder why they need more and more chemicals every year at higher and higher costs for lower and lower yields.”

“Amen, brother Cassidy,” Jake says. “I love it when you talk that way. Those aren’t the thoughts of a quitter.”

“I wish. I don’t know what to do. Maybe I’m just not cut out for it.” After a pause. “There’s more going on too.”

Jake looks at Dale, but he doesn’t say anything, and they finish cleaning out the stalls in silence.

After a final look around, satisfied with their work, they climb into the pickup truck and back out of the barn. As Dale turns the truck around, Alberto comes out of the house. He’s in his eighties, face tanned and wrinkled from the sun, his clear blues eyes still twinkling, a descendant of 17th Century colonizers who came to Peñasco directly from the mountains of Adalusia, Spain. Dale leans his arm out the truck window. “Neat as a beaver’s butt,” he smiles.

“Where you putting it?” Alberto asks.

“Starting alfalfa in the front field.”

“Kinda late,” Romero observes.

“Yah, a few weeks, but we got good water this year.  I’ll let it winter over, cut it next Spring.”

The two men wave a friendly goodbye, and the pickup truck heads down the dirt road clinging to the edge of the llano, high above a stream. Beyond the stream hay fields, separated by hedgerows, flow up to the dense Ponderosa pines and Douglas-firs of the national forest. There is a calm, enduring feeling to these high mountain communities that have remained almost the same for three hundred years.

2. That afternoon, July 15th, 1974

It’s late afternoon, the cloudless blue sky is brilliant at 7,500 feet. Dale and Cindy Cassidy’s adobe home is further down the dirt road from the Romero’s. The half-acre in front of the house is spread with the hay and manure from the truck, ready to be plowed in and planted. Between the half acre and a three-room adobe home in desperate need of mudding is a large vegetable garden. It’s the middle of summer. Corn is knee high and beans are leafing, lettuce is at its peak, and rows of strawberries are covered with fruit. Next to the house is a large, ragged hole in the ground with a mound of rock and dirt piled next to it, remnants of the failed water well. Behind the house the acequia (an ancient irrigation ditch), largely hidden by wild cherries and willows, is running full of water. A slightly bowed wooden bridge crosses the acequia into fields green with a new crop of Timothy. Picuris Mountain rises comfortably across Peñasco valley below the Llano. To the East, Jicarita Peak, still with a few patches of snow, dominates the valley like Queen Victory sitting on her throne.

The Cassidy’s have a tool shed just across the acequia. Further into the field sits a new barn with a herringbone pattern and a large corral that holds goats, pigs, a mule, and at the South end in a corner surrounded by chicken wire, a flock of hens and a single rooster. Inside the north end of the barn, Dale is installing a heating lamp over three tiny baby goats lying on a bed of fresh straw. His two sons, Jesse who is 6 and Mark who is 8, are gently caressing the goats. Dale twists the heating lamp wire around a bent nail in the roof of the cage and sets an automatic timer to turn on when it cools off at night. “Let’s get out of here. We’re late milking the goats.  I’ll come back tonight and make sure that wire’s secure.”

Dale leads four adult goats into his milking pen. He puts the largest in a milking-stand and starts to strip out her milk. Jesse and Mark hang playfully all over him, which is affectionate but also annoying and he gently pushes them off. “Common guys.”

“Let me try milking, dad. I can do it,” Mark insists.

“It’s pretty hard. Takes a really strong hand,” Dale says.

“I can do it!”

“Okay. Wash your hands and come on back.” Mark hesitates a moment and then runs off. When he returns with wet, clean hands, Dale helps him sit down in the milking chair. “Now look,” Dale says, “you got to start with the thumb and the top finger, then work your way down a finger at a time, pushing hard to keep the milk from going back up, forcing it out of the end of the tit. Now you try.”

Mark makes several attempts, finally gets a tiny drop or two, but after a moment’s satisfaction, he doesn’t have the strength to keep going. “That’s okay Pal, just keep doing a little bit every day and you’ll get there.” But Mark is disappointed with himself and to gain back self-esteem he goes over to the chickens and starts poking through the chicken wire at them with a long stick. Agitated, the hens cluck loudly. A rooster near the hen house looks up, sets a beady eye on Mark and hurls himself across the corral, taking flight at the last minute, chest high to Mark, smashing into the chicken wire. Mark stumbles back and falls into the dust.

Dales looks up. “You pick on his hens, that old rooster going right after you. Just be glad they’re not running free or he could of pecked your eyes out! Common now. Get the grain bucket and feed them instead.” Marks gets up and gets a bucket of chicken feed near the barn door. As grain falls among the chickens they forget their tormentor and greedily eat, rooster included. “Make sure you get enough to the scrawny ones with the feathers poked out. You know chickens are just like straight folks, they find the weakest in the group and go after them, drive them out or pluck ‘em to death if they can. Like straight people back in the cities.” Dale is repeating familiar words without much passion.

He finishes milking and releases the last goat. He stands up and carries the large pail of fresh milks through the gate out of the paddock. “You about done Mark?” Dale asks.

“Got it dad,” Mark replies.

“Bring that empty bucket and let’s go back to the house and start some cheese, ‘cause we sure can’t drink all the milk we’re producing these days.”

“Can I help too?” Jesse asks.

‘Of course, there’s something for everybody to do,” Dale says, patting Jesse’s head.

Dale walks into the kitchen with his two sons and puts the milk pail on a wooden table in the middle of the room. His wife Cindy is washing dishes at a sink. Pots of flowers sit on the windowsill above her. Bunches of dry sage, rosemary, rose hips and small, red chili peppers hang from the rafters. A wood burning stove and a pile of split wood sits against another wall. There is an ice box but no refrigerator, no electric lights, no electricity. Kerosene lanterns hang from the wall. Cindy throws a stick of wood into the burning stove fire. She moves a tub of water toward the back and wipes perspiration from her brow with the back of her forearm.

“We’re still getting lots of milk,” Dale says.

“More than we can use,” Cindy answers. “Gonna make cheese?”

“Yeah. I’ll have the boys help me,” Dale says. “You fixing dinner?”

“I’m going’ riding,” Cindy says. “Can you put them down?”

Dale doesn’t trust himself to say a word.

“You’re here making cheese anyway, so it’s no big deal to make their dinner and put them down.”

Dale wants to scream. That isn’t the issue, but he remains silent.  

“Dad, are we making cheese or what?” Mark asks.

“Get the pot. Pour the milk in real careful. I’ll put it up on the stove. Jesse, get the thermometer and put it in the milk.” Dale says.

“I’m just goin’ riding,” Cindy says.

“Yeah, with Skip and them,” Dale answers.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cindy asks.

“I don’t know. You going to be here for dinner?”

“Maybe later. Just leave me something.”  Cindy is remote.

Dale’s emotions seethe: grief, anger, stoic indifference, and an almost irresistible desire to run. He has no idea what he’s really feeling or why these emotions have hit him so quickly, so uncontrollably, and he doesn’t know what to do. His uncharacteristic vulnerability scares him.

“Are we making cheese?” Mark asks again with childish exasperation. Dale is a father. His emotions may be spinning out of control, but he has to focus on his boys. They had poured the milk into a pot, put in the thermometer and were waiting for him to lift it onto the stove.

Dale turns from Cindy and puts up the milk. 

“What’s the temperature supposed to be?” Mark asks.

“I’m doing it. I can read,” Jesse whines.

 “180 degrees, then we turn it off and I’ll take it down to cool off. Then, we put in yogurt.”

Cindy is gone when he turns back. He feels hollow inside, as if his upper body is only a rough outline of skin and bone around emptiness. Tears almost spill out of his eyes. Good god, I’m just too damn emotional, he thinks.

The kids look at their father quietly, aware he is distracted as he scrambles together smoked bacon, diced potatoes and eggs. They remain on their best behavior as they eat and clean up. Dale asks them to check the temperature of the milk.

“It’s done, it’s done,” the boys say in unison.

“Let me take it down.”

Dale reads the boys a story in the bedroom his two sons share. When they finally doze off, he adds yogurt to the now cool milk, covers the pot with cheesecloth and puts it near the stove to keep warm. As soon as the children are asleep, Dale opens a makeshift cabinet under the sink, searches carefully into the furthest corner, and finds a dust covered pint of Jim Bean whisky. He is a beer drinker, but tonight he needs something stronger. He grabs a kitchen chair and takes it out on the porch, sits down, twists the cap off the bourbon and takes a large swallow. His eyes water, his stomach lurches and he bends over at the waist, struggles to keep down the nausea. He caps the bottle, puts it on the porch at his side and rolls a joint.

Sorting through the emotions swirling inside of him, he realizes that deep down he is lonely. With Cindy in the arms of a new lover, he has no one with whom you share his doubts, his worry about the viability of the farm, his concern about his children, his insecurities.  Those she would wield as a weapon during their next domestic battle. His children depend on him. His friends feel sorry for him, so he can’t share his deeper pain with them. People feel sorry for someone they no longer respect. He was truly entirely alone in an indifferent universe, with only himself to blame.

He took another slug of whisky. It went down easier this time. With a bitter laugh, he realizes he’s killing himself, but it will take a long, long time. He is suddenly overwhelmed when he remembers his mother, teaching him how to grip a long-sleeved sweater with his fingers clutched in the palm of his hand to keep the sweater from riding up when she pulled on his winter coat. His sudden longing for her, to be held safely in her arms, to sense her warmth and smell the sweetness of her body, to feel completely safe and loved instead of humiliated and useless. Tears roll silently down his cheeks and Dale takes another large gulp of Jimmy Bean. At some point he falls asleep.

It is still dark when he wakes.  His head throbs, his eyes are swollen and itchy, his mouth dry, his stomach lurching.  It’s cold, and Dale thinks he should go inside to get a blanket, but it is far more planning and effort than he can manage. He squirms uncomfortable in his chair, pulls his jacket tighter and closes his eyes. His last thought is a garbled line from John Paul Sartre’s first novel called Nausea. “Am I a mere figment of my imagination?” 

He is so preoccupied he completely forgets about the heat lamp he installed in the barn.

3. The Next Morning July 16th, 1974

It’s near dawn when Cindy unlatches the gate and nudges the pickup truck up the driveway. When Dale hears the truck, he wakes up feeling even more cramped and tired than he had in the middle of the night. Cindy walks back to the road, closes the gate and returns reluctantly to the house. Dale can tell she’s already pissed off, knowing he’s about to start another fight.

“So I stayed the night with him. So what.”

“I thought it was over.”

“You spent plenty of nights with other women in Berkeley. You just don’t like it ‘cause it’s my turn now.”

“It’s different. We’ve got children. It’s real isolated out here and everybody knows what you’re doing. I’m a fucking cuckold, a joke to all our friends. I got no pride left at all.”

“I’m not listening to this shit again.”

“Don’t you have any respect for me? Don’t you have any love left?”

“What you dragging that out for. I’m with you, aren’t I?”

“Well hardly.”

“Don’t play victim.” 

Cindy walks past him into the house and Dale follows.  “You’re the one who always said you don’t care what people think of you. Stop acting like a fucking loser. Try to control yourself, the children are still sleeping,” Cindy says with quiet intensity.

Dale feels physically assaulted. A rush of fury strikes him like a heavy fist to the gut. It’s a repeat of the same confused emotions from last night, but the restraints are off this morning. He is exhausted. He feels overwhelmed by some powerful smell of the ocean, as if some driving force is coming from his distant mammalian past before we crawled out the sea, some genetic code of fury focused on overwhelming danger. Air rushes out of his lungs. He wants to run, he wants to fight. His vision betrays him. As if through a funnel, all he sees is Cindy’s glowing head surrounded by a field of darkness, leering and ugly as evil. He grabs a large, cast iron frying pan from the table, and as one tiny part of his mind looks on in horror, he starts to swing the heavy pan over his shoulders with the intention of hurling it at Cindy’s cruel, mocking face, but at the last moment it slips from his hands and clatters to the floor with a loud bang.

Cindy has already ducked. She stands up and looks at Dale. A wave of exhaustion pours over him and as his vision clears to reveal the whole room again, he sees his boys standing in the doorway staring at him in shock. Dale is devastated. He remembers witnessing this same scene when he was five or six, his father enraged at his mother, throwing a heavy frying pan that missed her by inches, braking apart against the wall. He remembers being terrified, remembers how he’s spent a lifetime trying to control the anger he’s inherited, promising never to frighten anyone.

Cindy walks past him. “You’re fucking crazy.” She opens the door and steps outside, looks puzzled, sniffs the air and runs up the driveway looking around. Smoke drifts across the willows along the acequia. She runs back into the house screaming, “Dale! Dale! Fire!”

Dale runs across the ditch, scooping up two buckets of water. As he approaches the corral, fire bursts through the front of the barn. The herringbone pattern was made with the outer cuts of pine trees, much of it with bark still on and it’s saturated with pitch. The barn is blazing by the time Dale reaches the corral gate. Even a hundred feet from the flames the heat is intense. Adult goats run around in a frenzy.  One explodes in a small, flesh bomb as the intensity of the heat and her lanoline-laden fur collide. Another explodes. Dale manages to open the gate and the rest of the animals run free. He looks down at his right arm holding the gate open. It bubbles like a well baked ham just out of the oven, and when the shock is over the pain is ruthless.

Dale and Cindy sit on their front porch. Cindy tenderly spreads aloe on Dale’s scorched arm. He stares into space, grimacing as little as possible.

“That’ll do,” Dale says gently without looking at her.

“Maybe we should use Vitamin E,” Cindy says.

“Maybe later.” Dale gets up, walks off the porch and heads across the acequia. The fire has died down, and he wanders through the ashes. Farm equipment, his mule’s harness and plow, all the feed, the next generation of baby goats and three adult goats, twenty-five prime laying hens, two pigs. The charred ruins of the barn join the gaping hole next to the house as vivid reflections of the vast hole in his heart and he knows the only course of action in response to his multiple failures is to get away.

4. That Night, July 16th, 1974

Dale, Jake and Brad, another bearded young man, sprawl on the sagging porch of another dilapidated three-room adobe house on the llano, sipping from cans of beer. It is dusk and the men sit in shadows. A horse harness hangs from a nail on the peeling plaster wall behind them next to a deep-set window. A galvanized tub and farm tools lean against the base. The men, dressed in overalls and denim jackets, are dirty and tired and the mood is somber. The open door brings the sounds of clattering pots and pans, young women chatting comfortably with each other, children arguing as they set a table for dinner and the intermittent cries of a fussy baby.

Dale sits in the middle. These are his closest friends in the mountains, but he has to work hard to suppress an irrational anger he feel toward them, as they sit smugly on the porch with their devoted wives waiting for him to speak. “Thanks for having me over,” Dale says grudgingly.

Jake sits on the edge of the porch with his feet on the ground. His wife is inside preparing dinner with their two kids. Brad’s wife Wendy is helping, their new baby is in the bedroom.   Jake say, “Hey, come on, this house is always open to you man, and you know it.”

“Brad, thanks for coming by,” Dale continues formally. Brad is big and open faced, with a ready smile, like the Jolly Green Giant that General Mills put on its frozen vegetable packages. As he takes another deep draught of beer, his face stretches in a slightly goofy grin that infuriates Dale. Brad is twenty-two. He sits against a post at the far end of the porch. “What are you talking about? What’s all the mystery?”

Dale stares down at the ground, thinking this was a mistake. He should just have disappeared, let it work itself out. They don’ feel like friends tonight anyway. He takes a drink of beer and looks at the ground. Stares into the darkness. “I just want to let you know I’ve decided to leave.” After a long pause, “For a while.”  

The other two men look at him without saying a word.

“I just got to get away. Make some money. Maybe come back and try again, but I’m whipped for now. Had to let you guys know.” Dale, the guy always in charge, the guy with the vision who hates admitting to his failures.

“Man, that’s one fucking bummer to lose your whole barn like that. But I know how you feel. I don’t even have gas money and Wendy needs stuff for the baby,” Brad says.

“Worst of it is, I did it again. I knew the heating lamp wasn’t secure, but I got into it with Cindy and it just slipped my mind. Goats must have knocked it into the straw. All that heat. Woosh! One fucking little slip.”

Jake talks like an older brother. “It’s unforgiving up here. We’ve all fucked up, one way or another. There’s always setbacks. This is bad one. But we’ll help you out.”

“It’s more than a setback. I need a lot of money now to get through the winter, and that’s just the beginning,” Dale says.

“Me too,” Brad adds. 

“There might be plastering work at Picuris Pueblo.” Jake says.

 “Five bucks an hour, the Indians hate us and it’s one fucking day here and one there and never enough.”

Brad takes a deep toke on the joint he is holding and passes it to Dale. “What the fuck we ‘gonna do?”

A wind comes up, flickering the flame on the kerosene lamp that hangs from the center porch post. Somewhere in the distance a cayote howls. The three men drink thoughtfully, then Brad says, “Someone said Eddy’s coming to town, and you know he went off earlier with that Texas contractor for work up in Utah.”

“What’s he doing coming back if he’s got work?” Jake asks.

Dale crumbles his beer can in one hand and looks at Brad. “You think he might need more men?” Brad grins and shrugs his shoulders. He doesn’t know. “Wendy,” Brad yells, “will you get us another beer?”

“Get your own beer, Brad,” Wendy yells back. Someone inside slams a pan down on the stove and the women laugh. The baby begins to howl like the coyote. Brad gets up and walks into the house.

“You know, I can make it through okay, but there’s stuff I’d like to do and I need money for it. If we could get a gig that paid enough, I’d go with you,” Jake says.

Dale looks at him but doesn’t know what to say. “And it looks like Brad would go along,” Jake adds.

“You better believe it,” Brad says as he comes out with three fresh cans of beer.

“I guess there’s always the Oklahoma oil fields,” Dale says. “They’re always hiring.”

5. The Next Day July 17th, 1974

Mid-morning the next day, Cindy walks out of her house and turns down the path toward the acequia carrying two galvanized buckets. She can hear Dale and her boys cleaning up the remains of the fire. She steps down to the acequia and fills the buckets from the fast-flowing ditch one at a time. When she turns to head back home, she notices dust on the road and a battered Subaru rattles to a stop at her front gate. She squints, stares without recognition and hurries home, the heavy pails banging against her legs.

Cindy enters the house and comes back out almost immediately without the buckets, cradling a shotgun as a short young man dressed like a cowboy walks up her driveway. “Whoa there mam,” Fast Eddy says.  “I bring tidings of joy!” He stops a good forty feet in front of her, puts up his hands and gives her a con man’s smile. Eddy with short hair and no beard looks almost square. His Western clothes are well worn and his boots are dusty. But Cindy senses there’s something off about him.

“I don’t know you. What the fuck you want here?” Cindy asks.

“Hey I’m friendly. I used to live down at the Hog Farm.  I’m just back. I’m hustling gigs for a contractor. I been down at Brads, and he told me Dale might be looking for work.”

Cindy thought about it for a moment. “What kind of work?”

“Building fences.”

“Where?”

“Utah.” Cindy stares at Fast Eddy with no expression on her face. He continues, “I need three good workers. Brad’s going. Maybe Jake. We could use Dale.” Cindy still doesn’t reply. “You know the party tonight? Well anyway, we’re goin’ to talk about it.”

“I’ll tell him,” Cindy says.

6. That night.

The Hog Farm is at the end of the llano, on open land that falls off into the Valley down a steep, forested hill. Past a small adobe house, a new A frame structure stands in the field with a gaping open front. It is packed with hippies of various ages, most of them are young and all of them have dropped out of straight society to survive by subsistence farming or by playing outlaw in the national forests. Some of them have trust funds, some have savings, and some are moochers, but everybody looks the same. They are all deeply tanned from the high-altitude New Mexico sun, their clothes are like the outfits of 1930’s farmers, their hands hardened by toil, faces dried by the winds, but still with the energy of youth, ready to dance the night away. A small band at the far end of the room belts out Bob Dylan and the Eagles’ most danceable numbers. Couples hog the floor in front of the band while in the corners men and women talk excitedly.

Along one wall a knot of young men drink hard from half pints and flasks, among them Fast Eddy who pronounces, “Well, as far as I’m concerned, if you wake up in the morning and you’re not behind bars you’re ahead of the game.” The men chuckle and look on tolerantly while Eddy explains to the few newcomers who don’t seem to know, how he’d spent two years in the New Mexico state penitentiary.

Toward the front, Brad, with youthful excitement, is telling Jack, Dale and their wives, “It’s building a worm fence -- you know, made out of logs nailed together in a zig zag pattern,” which he shows with his arms – “somewhere up in Utah.  Five bucks an hour, but that includes room and board … well, we’ll be sleeping in our own tents, but they provide food and it’s solid work through the summer. We could come home with about three grand, enough to take us through the winter for sure.”

Dale is half listening, half watching the dance floor where Cindy seems enraptured dancing with Skip. “I gotta get the fuck out of here,” he mumbles. The other three men look at him and seem to understand.  The women don’t say a word.

“Maybe we should all take peyote. See what the medicine has to tell us,” Brad says. 

“We could read the I Ching,” Dale says sarcastically.

“What the fuck we gonna do?” Brad asks.  Wendy looks daggers at her husband and says, “You just want to get away from the new baby. Don’t want to find any work around here.”

“There isn’t enough money in this whole valley for us to make what we need to get through next Winter,” Dale says.

“Who’s gonna take care of the animals?” Wendy wants to know.

The three couples, faces glistening with sweat in the candlelight, music booming in the background, look at each other. Jake’s wife, Elizabeth, who like Jake is a little older than the others, puts her hands on Jake’s arm and gives him a look as if to say, go ahead and tell them.

“Listen, Elizabeth and I could use a little extra money and, frankly, do you guys really have a choice?” Jake asks? No one says anything. “It sure beats going to the oil fields.”

7. Four Days Later, July 22nd, 1974

An ancient VW van in desperate need of paint struggles up a long hill in the Rocky Mountains. The engine coughs and misses a beat then catches again. Brad drives. He tips his battered straw hat down to protect his eyes from the sun. Eddy sits next to him, a wide Stetson set straight on his head, eyes squinting directly into the sun, leg jiggling. He leans forward and sucks deeply on a fat joint. “What the fuck you take this piece of shit on the road for?”

Jake and Dale, dirty Stetsons tipped back on their heads, are in the back seat. They are also leaning forward as if trying to propel the van forward with their body language. The back of the van is strewn with worn camping gear, a sack of onions, another of beans, bags of potatoes and a variety of battered coolers.  Jake reaches across the seat for the joint and says, “They need the work vehicles. Can’t rely on this piece of crap for wood runs, can’t haul shit. All we gotta do is get there, right?”

     Dale takes the joint and sucks it down to a nub, then pops the roach in his mouth and chews on it. Although he feels some relief in getting away from the scenes of his failures, he remains angry at the world and bitter toward Cindy. “Cindy could use her new boyfriend’s truck,” he says.

“I thought you were all about free love,” Eddy needles him. Dale stares out the window, suppressing a fury now focused on Eddy. Everything irritates him, the whining, stressed out noise the van makes, the uncomfortable seat, the dirty window. Brad bobs his head up and down with a smile on his face, agreeing. Eddy laughs. “Got you there buddy.”

Dale seethes with anger and they fall silent as the engine coughs again, shuts down, then catches, jerks forward over the crest of the hill and starts to drift down the other side. Dale backs into his corner and stares bleakly out the window at the scattered trees of the national forest. “It’s all over, the whole fucking hippie thing, the drop-out bullshit. The country’s burning but it’s not falling apart.” Nobody says anything. “I read the Sunday New York Times as often as I can.”

“The prince of peyote is having second thoughts,” Eddy says.

“Get off my fucking case. That’s something else entirely,” Dale replies. “It’s just that we can’t really make it without working, so what’s the fucking point?”

“You’re just down ‘cause you lost your barn and Cindy’s jerking your chain,” Jake says. “There is nothing in the straight world to go back to.”

“Well I’m looking forward to getting away to Utah,” Brad says. “I haven’t left the fuckin’ farm in almost two years. This is going to be an adventure!”

“It’s gonna be hard work, is what it’s gonna be,” Eddy says.

Jake looks over at Dale, concern on his face. “You want that dog-eat-dog shit? You want everything you do judged by the money you make and the toys you have? You want to cut your hair, shave your beard, lose your earring, get new clothes, cause you gotta do all that and you’ll need to have the mind set behind it to make it all work back there.”

“We were gonna’ plant seeds for the future of mankind,” Dale says. “We can’t even plant enough seeds to feed ourselves.”

“Nobody’s going anywhere,” Eddy says grimly. “Except to Utah.

It’s dark when they reach Durango, Colorado and decide to get a bite to eat. Cutting off Route 160, they head down 8th Avenue and find the 8th Avenue Lounge. It’s a long, narrow room with a bar on one side that stretches half-way down from the door and tables for two placed against the other wall. There’s a pool table in the back. The lounge isn’t crowded. The few straight working men and women sitting around openly stare at the new arrivals. The hippies are used to it. Bearded, long hairs are still a provocation outside of major cities in the United States in 1974. They find room for four at the bar, sit down and order: steak for Eddy, cheeseburgers for the rest, washed down with draft beer and a shot of Jim Beam.

The 8th Avenue Lounge fills up while they eat dinner, the juke box starts playing country and western songs, and the sounds of clicking pool balls drift in from the back of the room. As Tammy Wynette’s golden voice lurches between sorrow and defiance while she “stands by her man, even though he’s hard to understand,” the four young hippies finish eating.

“Listen to those pool balls. Time to make a little cash, my friends,” Eddy says. 

“Come on. let’s get to the fuckin’ job,” Dale says.

“Twenty minutes max,” Eddy says.

“Eddy let’s get out of here,” Jake says.

“I’ll make enough for a few goodies before we get to camp.  I never lose.” Eddy says as he downs his third shot of Jim Beam, slips off his stool and heads for the back of the room, leaving the other three to pay his bill.  “After all, he’s just a man,” Tammy sings. They look at each other in resignation and finish their shots. Jake pays the tab and they join Eddy in back.

An hour later Jake is holding a handful of cash and Eddy is on a winning streak against one of the locals. The game has attracted a crowd. Eddy’s local opponent turns to his watching friends and says, “God damn, now, you watch that little fella, ‘cause he’s gonna tighten’ up.”

The room quiets as Eddy tries to concentrate on his shot. His opponent continues, “That’s the thing about these little guys. They always blow it in the end. Can’t take the pressure.”

More silence as Eddy steadies his shot. He draws the cue back and starts to plunge it forward when the local says, “Oh! Oh! Don’t get rattled now Shorts.”

Eddy misses the shot and the local goes on to win the game.  He delicately plucks the money from Jake’s hand to the delight of the crowd. Eddy, in a black rage, accuses his opponent of changing the position of the cue ball on the last shot. An argument breaks out, and the men start shouting at each other.  The four hippies move together. Eddy raises his cue stick. The local raises his. Several of his friends grab sticks off the wall racks, and the hippies are outnumbered five to one. Jake grabs a stick and Brad and Dale follow suit. Eddy swings his stick. “You lead,” Dale tells Brad, and with a disarming smile on his face and a poised cue stick Brad leads them out through the narrow room with Eddy taking up the rear, wildly swinging his pool cue and catching smacks against his chest and thighs as they step into the Utah night, drop the cue sticks and sprint toward the van. Merle Haggard is on the jukebox singing “… no one could steer me right, but Mama tried.” The locals cluster at the door, laughing. 

It’s pitch black. The highway is empty. Dale and Jake sleep in the back seat. Brad, who is still driving, rubs his eyes. Eddy keeps nervously pumping his leg, the ever-ready bunny. “Pull over at that lookout,” Eddy says.” Brad pulls over, stops and turns off the engine.

Dale and Jake wake up. It’s completely silent. “What’s going on?” Jake asks.

Eddy turns on the overhead light, takes a jack knife out of his pants pocket and extracts a map from the glove compartment. He pulls a small plastic bag filled with tiny purple pills out of his shirt pocket. “Wake up and smell the sunshine,” Eddy says. Squeezing the top of the plastic bag to open it, he takes out a single purple pill, puts it on the map and carefully cuts it into four pieces. “Quarter tab time, lets push on through. Fire her up Brad!” The four young men put the quarter tabs on their tongues and dry swallow them while Brad starts the VW and drives back onto the empty highway.

After a long, straight stretch, their headlights pick up a sign for Monticello, Utah, population 2,025. The young men’s eyes are bright and their extra energy makes the van feel too small, but they are more animated than high. “We need gas,” Brad says. “And I need take a piss,” Eddy says. 

There is not a light on anywhere in Monticello, but they finally find an open Shell station on the way out of town. Brad pulls the van in and parks by a pump. The young men stagger out and stretch, touch their toes, jump in place. Brad asks Jake for his credit card. “It’s the only one that still works, man.”

Brad starts to fill the tank. Eddy walks toward the small convenience store. The store lights go out. Eddy continues, tries the locked door and then knocks on it. There’s no answer.  He peers in but can’t see into the darkness. He raps more heavily, still with no response. Then he pounds and yells, “Open up you mother fucker I got to take a piss.” There is still no answer. Eddy whips out his prick and urinates on the door. “Have it your way.”

The other three hippies hang around the van and exchange uncomfortable glances as Brad finishes filling the tank. Eddy seems to be taking the longest piss ever. Finally, he dribbles to an end. tucks it back in, turns toward his companions with a self-satisfied grin and pumps his clenched fists in the air like a celebrating general. Sirens blare in the distance. The hippies freeze, then Eddy heads for the van, but before he gets to it a police car rolls into the station blocking the van’s exit. Two cops get out and walk toward Eddy with their Billy clubs ready.

The officers spin Eddy around, cuff his hands roughly behind his back and prod him with their sticks to move toward the police car, all without saying a word. Eddy immediately adopts his prison demeanor and is meek and submissive as they hold his head down and push him into the back seat.

The cop car takes off. The hippies get in their van and follow. “It's Utah, man. They fuckin’ hate hippies,” Brad says. 

“Eddie doesn’t look like a hippie,” Jake says.

“He looks like a fuckin’ ex con, is what he looks like,” Dale says.

Brad pulls into the police station and parks. The hippies walk inside where they see Eddy being held behind a divider.  The cops are hostile. Dale, Jake and Brad exchange wary glances as they walk up to the counter. One of the cops comes over to talk to them. He seems more curious than unfriendly. “That’s a serious crime that boy’s pulled off, and if he’s done time like we think he has then he’s going back,” he tells them.

Jake puts on his most serious face and despite the beard, hair over his ears and the ragged clothes, seems to pass for something like an adult. “Listen,” he says earnestly, “we’re on our way to a job up near Price and he’s our contact and we need four men for the work. It’s an all summer job, back in the wilderness, we probably won’t even see a town up here. We’re desperate for work. We got families to feed back home. This is our best chance to get enough money to make it through the winter. It’s only five bucks an hour, but its steady. We’ve driven five hundred miles to get here. We’re exhausted and he ain’t thinking straight. We’ll take care of him, see that he doesn’t get in any more trouble.”

The cops keep them waiting for several hours. Eddy is still isolated, but for the others their mood quickly goes from anxiety to boredom. The sun comes up. The shift changes. The questions begin again. They need to check ids, confirm that Eddy has done time and take fingerprints again. Finally, with the promise never to stop in Monticello again, the cops let them go.

Brad still drives. Dale is now in the front seat next to him. He is angry. He turns and faces Eddy. “It’s too fucking much man. That’s two in one day. Your either gonna get us all killed or jailed. What the fuck is going on?”

Eddy is shit-eating contrite, although maybe a little play acting as well. “I’m really sorry guys.” He pauses and thinks for a moment. “I mean why wouldn’t that bastard let me use his bathroom?” He gets more aggressive. “I mean that’s a civil rights violation. That’s what the fucking cop should have been investigating.”

“It’s not the same thing. Pissing on someone’s door isn’t a civil right,” Jake says.

“Well he was discriminating,” Eddy replies. Jake looks disgusted.

“You could of just walked over to the trees,” Brad days.

“Come on, you’re fucking us all up. That was just stupid, It’s like you’re picking fights. You gotta mellow out man.” Dale says.

“You telling me to mellow out? That will really help a lot. Anyway, you been fucking pissed off this whole trip, so talk to yourself motherfucker,” Eddy sneers. They ride on in silence.

7. That Afternoon, July 23nd, 1974

Later that afternoon, Eddy tells Brad to turn off Highway 191 and head through Price, then up a narrow road that leads them into the Wasatch wilderness. After forty twisting miles of steady uphill climbing, the broken pavement ends at an abandoned lumber mill. Eddy points down a narrow, overgrown dirt road that takes them deep into a forest of towering Douglas Fir trees, through groves of shimmering golden Aspen surviving far below the huge conical evergreens.

They are deep in the wilderness, with roadless, largely unexplored forested canyons stretching miles in every direction. They finally emerge from the trees onto a high grassy ridge where the dirt road peters out. Brad stops the van, turns off the motor, and the hippies get out and stretch. A steady wind bends the tall meadow grass, sprinkled with yellow daffodils, deep blue lupin, small yellow daisy-like Arrowleaf, and wild blue flax. They are somewhere above 8,500 feet and it is chilly. Along the edges of the meadow, towering cones of Douglas Firs and stands of white barked aspen. Snow-capped mountains in the distance, like a postcard. It is beautiful but isolated, remote, a rare part of the world still cut off from civilization.

Shivering, they get back in the van and Eddy directs Brad down a two-track trail toward a large RV parked on a wide shelf below the crest. They drift into the contractor’s camp and a huge man emerges from the RV, six-foot six, buff as a body builder, his forearms the size of most men’s thighs, the Marlborough Man, the archetype western cowboy, with a deeply tanned face as craggy as the desert mountains. He looks stunned when the four hippies get out of the van. “What the fuck you got there, Eddy? Don’t look like no wetbacks to me,” he says with a heavy West Texas accent. 

Two younger versions of the contractor follow him out, not quite so tall but rugged Western looking, with thumbs stuck belligerently in the top of their jeans. Chris Evans wears a stiff, white cowboy hat and snakeskin boots. Jim Pickins wears a black Stetson, dark red shirt and black jeans with well-worn copper colored boots. He carries a large knife in a sheath attached to his belt. They wear huge Texas belt buckles, are tanned and rodeo tough, which the hippies later learn is where the contractor picked them up. All three men look at the hippies without bothering to conceal their disdain.

“These boys will do better than any wetbacks,” Eddy says with his most persuasive con man’s voice. “I got ‘em because your last bunch of Mexicans run off. These guys will stick it out.”

The Marlborough Man stares at the three hippies for a long moment, evaluating his options, looking ever more dubious but caving in to reality, he finally says, “Well, you boys gonna’ be double tough before this summer’s over. My name is Destry Trainam, but you can call me ‘Boog’ as in ‘old booger.” Without shaking hands, he walks past them out into the field and turns back, gesturing as he talks. “You boys pick a place to camp, not too close to the RV. Get what you need from the forest. You’re on your own today, on the clock tomorrow. I’ll come by with a couple of beers tonight. Get to know each other.” Boog walks past them and climbs into the RV without another word and his cowboys follow behind him.

The hippies set up camp fifty yards away, facing the Wasatch high country. Two tents, a large one with three sleeping bags on air mattresses and a table and chairs under a tent canopy. Eddy pitches a small tent for himself. It’s easy work for the hippies, they’ve done it a hundred times. Conversation is kept to a minimum, “Hand me that tent pole. Can you pound down that corner stake? Give me a hand with the flap. Where’s the damn table?”

Jake and Dale head off for firewood. Eddy builds a fire pit. Brad adds a large flat rock as a work counter, and they prop a cutting board on two low folding stools and begin to cut up onions, garlic and potatoes. Brad puts a pot of beans to soak. “The air’s great. I really like it up here,” he says as if on vacation. “Look at those mountains.” Eddy just looks at him.

Sated by their meal, the hippies are sitting around their campfire when Boog and his two sidekicks arrive. He hands out four cold beers, and the hippies make room for the three men. They size each other up as they sit down. In size and weight, the three cowboys out match the hippies and in some subtle way dominate the campfire. Everyone pops open their beer cans and takes a large swallow.

“Where you boys from?” Boog asks.

“New Mexico,” Dale says.

“Albuquerque?” Boog asks.

“In the mountains, up near Taos,” Dale says.

“What are you doing up there?” Boog asks.

“Just trying to live,” Dale says.

“Well you’re here, so I guess you ain’t living that good.” Chris Evans rubs his knees and laughs. Jim Pickins shows no emotion.

“You born there?” Boog ask?

“Of course they ain’t,” Chris says.

“Where’s your home at?” Boog wants to know.

“I’m from San Francisco originally,” Dale says.

“What did you do in San Francisco?” Boog asks.

Dale stares into the fire without replying.  Boog waits him out. 

“What the fuck?” Jim says sarcastically, “You rob banks or something?”

Dale finally replies, “I was a professor. Taught philosophy at a community college.”

 “Jesus Christ,” All three cowboys are stunned. “That’s a good fuckin’ job? I mean, you can make a good living at that and I bet have a lot of fun. You have to go to college to get a job like that. What the fuck you doing here?” Boog stares at Dale as if searching for an answer. Chris looks bewildered and intrigued, as if this was a puzzle he needed to figure out. Jim says in a low voice dripping with disgust, “You were a professor and now you’re no better than a fucking wetback. Why do you hate yourself so much?”

Before Dale can answer, Boog turns to Jake.  “And where you from?”

“Originally, Florida,” Jake says.

“And what’d you do there?”

Jake smiles, “I was a research physicist for the Raytheon corporation, working on missiles.”

“God damn! A rocket scientist and a philosophy professor! And here you are, you look like bums and you’re making $5.00 an hour putting up a fence. If that don’t beat everything boys,” he says as he turns to his companions. Chris and Jim slap their thighs and laugh along with Boog. Chris still seems slightly intrigued, but Jim seems even more disgusted.

Looking at Eddy Boog says, “I know what you are.” Eddie looks into the fire and doesn’t say anything. Turning to Brad. “And you?”

“I dropped out of high school,” Brad says, looking both chagrin and proud of the fact, as if saying we’re all equal up here.

Jake is serene. “I was making missiles that kill people. I was married to a woman who only cared about money. Our friends were obsessed with buying the latest household appliance, automobile or yard gadget, everyone had to have a better one.  Everybody had to be perfect or at least pretend to be. It was all phony. I just got tired of being a phony.”

“Well you look pretty damn phony to me. You don’t look like a normal American. Why don’t you at least shave off your beards and cut your hair like other people. You look like fucking bums. Why make trouble for yourselves? I just don’t get it.” Boog is exasperated.

Dale answers. “First, long hair is natural. Men’s hair grows. It gets longer. If you shave and cut it off, you’re doing something unnatural, you’re conforming to someone else’s idea of what’s right, but they’re just trying to control you. They start with the hair. End with your mind. We’re the most American thing there is, because we want to be free. That’s the American dream!“ He pauses for a moment. “It’s also a shock of reality, because we generally get treated just like the poorest black guys, so we know what America is really like. We don’t want any part of it. We have left American culture to start a new culture.”

Dale is beginning to make a speech, and Jake can see Boog is getting agitated. He butts in. “Dale has to make everything into a national cause. I say live and let live. You want to be a cowboy, that’s great. If you love physics, and you don’t mind making weapons, I guess that’s okay too. I like to live far away from all that, as simply as possible, so I have time for music, hanging out in nature and love. But I’ll help you build a solid fence, Boog.”

“It just don’t make no sense boys. This is the freest goddamn country in the world, and you can do whatever you want without looking like a freak and scaring people. It’s just crazy. You could be making good money, live in a nice house, wear good clothes. I don’t know. You could be doing something with your lives! You got every fucking advantage and it’s like you hate this great country.” Boog is getting worked up.

“If this country’s so free, why do people care how I look?”  Dale asks.

“Cause you got no respect for anything, asshole,” Jim says. “That’s what your long hair and scraggly beard and sloppy clothes are really saying. It’s disrespecting everybody. It’s saying fuck you to the country.” The Hippies readjust themselves, move a touch further away from the cowboys. They say nothing.

Boog stands and shakes his head. “You got everything going for you and you hate this country. You feel so fucking pathetic about your privileges that you got to run the whole country down. It’s people like you who make all the trouble. Stirring up folks to burn down their own cities. Making us lose a war we could have won easy, if you people had let us.”

Jim stands up next to Boog. “I lost fucking buddies in Nam. And you people spit on ‘em when they came home. You outa think about that.” By now everyone is getting up. The Hippies seem baffled by the attack and just look at each other.

Chris says earnestly, “If you don’t like this country, why don’t you just go away. Go someplace else and leave America for people like us who really appreciate what we’ve got, man?”

Boog has had enough. He turns dismissively to Eddy. “Bring in the mules when you wake up in the morning and pack ‘em up. You know the drill.” The cowboys walk back to the RV, heads rotating in disbelief and nodding in agreement. “They’ll wish they were back teaching or whatever when this summer’s over,” Boog says loudly enough for everyone to hear him.

“Best to avoid politics,” Jake says quietly.

8. The Next Morning July 24th, 1974

The Hippies camp is barely visible in the light of a half-moon about to drop below the horizon. The three young men are sound asleep in the big tent when Boog sticks his head in and yells at the top of his lungs, “Up and at ‘em.”  He pulls out of the tent, laughs to himself, shakes his head and heads back to the RV.

The hippies go about their morning tasks in groggy, stunned silence. Jake and Dale start breakfast over the open fire while Eddy and Brad round up the mules, lead them to a staging area near the RV and put on their packsaddles. They eat breakfast, clean up the camp, and under Eddy’s direction load the mules with bags of twelve-inch spikes, sledgehammers, chain saws, cans of gasoline and oil, sharpening jigs and rags.

Boog and the cowboys join them with jugs of water and bags of sandwiches, which they add to the mule loads. Boog is imperious and dismissive, ordering Eddy and Jake to handle the two mules at the end of the line. Boog has worked with Eddy, and even if the little shit is an ex-con, he knows the drill. Jake is the oldest of the others, so Boog chooses him. He tells Dale and Brad to fall in behind the cowboys. Dale resents being told to do the obvious. They head off to the fence line just as the sun climbs above the ridge, their sour mood keeping them from seeing the intense beauty of trembling aspen, dark Douglas Fir and fields of wildflowers.  

The worm fence crosses the high meadow and slopes down into a deep canyon. Once in the trees, the fence plunges down a timbered slope of loose soil and rock out-cropping. The cowboys drop back to help Jake and Eddie control the mules as they slip and slide, bounce off trees and stumble to the bottom of the canyon. Boog stops at the edge of a fast-flowing tributary of the Green River and waits until they are all down. The worm fence ends at the river.      

Dale looks at the clear water running between polished boulders, some pools maybe four or five feet deep, shallow rapids, a perfect habitat for trout. For the first time on this trip he looks boyish and delighted, at peace with the world. “God, look at that water. I bet it hasn’t been fished in years, if ever.”

Dale’s mood evaporates as Boog shouts, “Let’s get it on.” They cross the river and unload the mules. Chris and Eddie switch the pack saddles for dragging chains. Brad helps Boog sort the gear. Dale, Jake and Jim sharpen chain saws and fire them up. When the last chain saw is roaring Boog calls out, "Start time, you’re on the clock, let’s move it!"

Dale looks at Eddy. “What the fuck?  We’re not getting paid for getting down here?”

“We’ve been working at least an hour,” Brad says.

That’s just Boog’s way,” Eddy says.

Dale is pissed off. “You didn’t think to mention that?”

“Don't fuck with me!” Eddy answers.

“What else haven’t you told us?”

Jake gives them a tired look. “We’ll deal with it later.”

The day does not go well. Boog divides the hippies into two groups and puts one of his cowboys in charge of each. The idea clearly is to keep the hippies from working together where they might not pull their weight. Boog clears the trail ahead of the fence, but he frequently comes back to micromanage the teams. One team cuts down trees with approximately 6-inch diameters and saws them into two or three 16-foot segments. It is difficult and dangerous work, wielding chain saws on a hillside with unstable footing. A hatchet hangs from the tree cutters belts to chop the brush away from around the bottom of the trees to get clear saw points. The cutter has to figure out which way the tree is naturally leaning, make sure that none of the other workers are within the fall zone, then cut a V on the leaning side to encourage the fall in that direction, and finally make the last cut on the other side. The tree hovers for a moment, then topples into the brush if they get it right. If not, the tree gets caught up in the branches of another tree and they have to use a mule to drag it down. All this, with one foot below the other grabbing for traction on a slippery hillside.  

The trouble begins almost immediately. The hippies have been doing wood runs for several years and are adept at chainsaws while rodeo cowboy Jim is learning on the job. He is clueless but empowered by Boog to be bossy. In fact, Boog insists on it. And the more insecure Jim becomes as Dale and Jake out-perform him, the more he has to show he’s in charge. It takes Jim way too long to find a good tree, then he’s slow to clear the brush, sloppy with the cutting and careless with the fall, so he hangs up his trees or drops them so close to Dale or Jake that they have to jump out of the way to avoid serious injury. Boog doesn’t see this. He chews Jake out for working too close to Jim. He tells Dale he’s taking too long trimming branches. Dale looks at him, sneers and doesn’t do anything differently. Boog pretends he doesn’t notice, but it chews him up. It’s not about power; it’s about respect.

The other team has its own problems, getting the mules down the hill and in position to drag the logs, then forcing them back up the hill pulling a load through brush and trees either too large or small for the fence, while the mules struggle for footing and gasp for air. The sixteen-foot sections frequently get caught up on a stump or a stubborn clump of bushes. Eddie or Brad has to stop the mule, ease it backward to loosen the tension on the chain, lift the log around the obstacle before they can continue to drag it to the fence line. Boog yells at them when the logs get caught. “What the fuck you doing? Can’t you even keep it out of the brush?”

At the fence, they lift a log in place, Chris, who waits for them by the fence, stabilizes the log, and Brad and Eddie hold a 12-inch nail in one hand and a 16-pound sledgehammer in the other, just a few inches from the head. They tap in the spike to secure it, then stand back and using the full thirty-six inches of the hickory handle, swing the head over their shoulders and smash the spikes into the logs with four or five blows. It’s a small target, easy to miss and it’s never fast enough for Boog.

By lunch time the hippies are bone weary and sprawl on the ground to eat the bologna and Iceberg lettuce sandwiches on white bread that Boog brought. The two camps, cowboys and hippies sit separately from each other across the River. The cowboys chat among themselves. The hippies eat in moody silence. After a half hour Boog is up. “Let’s get back to it. We need 100 sections by quitting time.”

“No wonder the fucking wetbacks ran off,” Dale mutters.

Boog turns back to look at them. “Somebody say something?”

9. That Night July 24th, 1974

The sun dips below the horizon as the seven men and two mules come up the ridge and back into camp. Boog leads with a spring in his step, the two cowboys follow. Eddy and the three hippies lag behind, dragging their feet and pulling the mules behind them.

Boog waits for them at their tents. “Get those mules unloaded and hobbled in the field. I’ll bring your dinner down in a bit,” he says. He and cowboys continue toward their RV.

The hippies look at each other with a kind of weary disbelief, but Jake shrugs and they take the mules over to the staging area and unload them.  He and Eddy pick up the hobbles and head out into the field with the mules. Brad starts a fire. Dale puts on a pot of water.

They sit around the campfire drinking coffee.  At the RV, Chris has fired up a grill and is dropping on chicken parts and steaks. The hippies exchange tired smiles of anticipation. Boog walks past the grill and down toward them carrying a cardboard box. “Dinner boys,” Boog says, drops the carton on the ground next to the fire pit and walks away. Dale opens it and finds a head of iceberg lettuce, a loaf of white bread and a dozen eggs on top of several layers of individual serving cans of Van Camp’s Beanee Weenees, a combination of skinless hot dogs, beans and catsup that was first developed and sold during the Civil War.

“What the fucking what?” Dale asks. The other three look into the box. 

Brad takes out a can and starts to read the label. “White Beans, Chicken Franks, Water, Salt, Corn Syrup, Dextrose, Sodium Phosphate, Sodium Erythorbate, Sodium Nitrite ….”

Dale goes ballistic. “We do all the fuckin’ work, cutting the trees, hauling them, while they do a little clearing and some lame ass cutting and then they get steak and chicken and we’re eating Beanee Weenees? I don’t fucking think so. It ain’t happening. That’s fuckin’ it.” Dale gets up. “What the fuck you get us into Eddy?”

“They’re not so bad,” Eddy says defensively. He grabs a can opener and a can, opens it and smells deeply. Smiles. Hands it to Dale, who takes one smell and gags. “I ain’t eating this shit.” The others stand up and crowd around Dale for their own smell and their exhaustion melts into anger.  

Dale says, “We’ve got to do something about this.”

Speaking as the older consigliere, Jake says as reasonably as possible, “Let’s go talk to them.”

Dale leads the four hippies up to the RV. Boog and the cowboys are sitting under a canopy enjoying the last remnants of their steak and chicken with bottles of cold beer.

Dale struggles to remain calm. He holds out an open can of Beanee Weenies and asks, “What the fuck is this Boog? You’re eating steak and grilled chicken and we get Beanee Weenees?”

Brad butts in, “We do all the fuckin’ work out there and then you get a good meal and beer and we get dog shit. This ain’t working.”

Jake tries to be reasonable. “Listen, the work’s fine but the food just seems unfair Boog.”

“Well I’m sorry for the misunderstanding boys,” Boog says with a shit eating smile. He was expecting this and seemed to be enjoying it. “I worked this all out with Eddy. He gives Eddy a dirty look. “Didn’t you tell them?” Eddie shrugs. “We’re paying for the chicken and steaks out of our own salaries. The contract calls for Beanee Weenees for all of us, but we’re kicking in our own money. You could do the same thing next time you’re in town.”

Dale isn’t mollified.  He pushes his hips against the table, rattling the plates, knocking over a beer bottle and thrusts his face forward. “The work isn’t fine. Getting the mules in the morning, loading them up, walking down to the fence head, that’s all fucking work man.  It’s an hour of our time that you ain’t paying us for. And then we have to do the same thing at the end of the day. No pay for that either. We’re working damn near twelve hours a day and getting paid for ten.”

Boog stands up and pulls himself to his full height. He flexes his muscles, pushes out his chest and hardens his expression. The two cowboys stand up next to him. “You work in a factory you don’t get paid when you arrive in the parking lot.  You get paid when you’re on your machine.  If you’re a carpenter, you don’t get paid for keeping your tools clean and sharp and for driving to work.  You get paid for using them. When you pick vegetables, you don’t get paid for riding to the fields. You get paid for pickin’. Anyway, that’s my rules boys, and that’s all the contract can afford. It’s what Eddy and the wetbacks worked for, so if you don’t like it you can all just pack up your hippie van and pull on out of here.”

Jake and Brad move next to Dale. Eddy goes off to the side. “We can work this out,” he says.

Nobody pays him any attention. Jim puts his hand on his knife. Boog looks ready for a fight. Jake gently pulls Dale back from the table. “We’ll talk about it. We’re not going anywhere tonight.” And they walk back to their campsite.

They eat their dinner off battered aluminum plates. A pot of beans simmers over the fire. A pile of Beanee Weenee cans sits next to an empty cutting board with a knife and some onion, garlic and potato scraps. Dale sits with his back to the rest of them staring into space. Eddy sits as far away from him as possible. Brad and Jake shovel food into their mouths trying not to taste it.  

All of their eyes are sunken and their motions sluggish. Dale says to no one. “Boog just can’t treat us this way. It’s fucked up. We don’t have to take it. He’s one mean mother fucker”

“Damn well we don’t have to take it. I ain’t working under these conditions,” Brad says.

After a moment Jake asks, “You want to go back home?”

Eddy pleads. “You can’t leave now. I’ll never get another crew. Boog will never trust me again.”

They all sit and think about it. “Fuck. Wendy ‘ill have my ass,” Brad says.

They stare into the fire. Jake finally gets up and collects their plates, drops them in a basin of soapy water, cleans the cutting board, wipes off the knife and stores it. “It's just hard to see us driving back home, telling everyone we didn’t make it.”

“But it’s totally fucked up,” Dale says as he turns back toward the fire.

“No doubt about that,” Jake agrees.

“I’m just such a fucking looser,” Dale mumbles.

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself, for Christ’s sake,” Jake answers.

10. The next morning July 25th, 1974

It’s a half hour before dawn. “Up and at ‘em.” Boogs yells into the dark tent and then ducks back outside grinning. The hippies slowly get out of bed. Every muscle on every one of them hurts. “Fucking son of bitch,” Dale says. Bleary eyed and aching, Eddy and Brad head off to collect the mules while Dale and Jake prepare a fire and breakfast.

The hippies finish eating and are washing their plates as the first light appears and Boog walks into their camp. “Listen, I don’t much like your attitude, boys, but if it don’t cost me nothing I’ll make an accommodation. You all come by tonight and I’ ll show you the books. We divide the amount of money for food up seven ways and share equally. Now if you want, I’ll give you your share of the money and you can spend it any way you like.” Jake nods acknowledgment and continues getting ready to leave. “Listen, that’s a square deal and you need to know it. You may be a fucking rocket scientist back east, but out here you’re working for me. Do you get it?”

Jake looks up and wonders what the fuck is wrong with him? But all he says is, “I get it Boog.”

On this day’s march to the fence head, they struggle down the canyon, across the River and part way up the other side, pulling the reluctant mules up much of the hill. Past the end of the fence line, the slope evens out somewhat and they unload the mules. Boog calls them together. “Listen boys, we're out in the middle here, faraway from any roads, and there’s no need to drive in every spike on that fence. Spike the bottom row, then just pile ‘em on and spike the top one. Save time and the Forest Service will never check out here. And try to find dead trees that are already down. Just stick some mud on the ends and no one can tell they’re rotten. The hippies look at each other with “this is totally fucked up but what do you expect” expressions.

The day begins like the first day, but quickly adopts a new rhythm. Without saying anything, Jim stops cutting and focuses on finding trees (dead if possible) and clearing the brush away.  Jake and Dale do the heavy work of cutting and trimming. It’s harder for them, but much safer and quicker and they don’t complain. Jim is lazy and leaves them alone after that, becoming imperious only when Boog is around.

Chris mostly stays by the fence while Eddie and Brad drag the poles through the trees. He helps with snags and is easy going. The fence team stays ahead of the tree cutters, so they don’t complain either. In down time, Chris asks Brad about hippie life. Boog continues to push everyone and they finish the last ten fence sections to get to the daily goal of 100. On the long walk back to camp the hippies are dragging but the cowboys aren’t laughing either.

That night, Boog, his cowboys and the hippies sit around a table under the RV canopy. An electric light dangles from one of the canopy poles. A generator rumbles in the background. Boog is showing the hippies an account book. He is completely open and lets them take the book into their own hands to see all his line items. The money allocated to food is the single highest after their salaries. They can see the bottom line, that for his summer’s work, Boog is making a small profit and only if everything goes according to schedule. He hands them a pile of cash. “So here’s the food money for the week boys.”

Back in camp, the hippies’ mood has lightened. Sitting around the campfire, Brad says, “We can eat a lot better for the money Boog gave us.”

“The work’s steady,” Jake says.

“Well I got no place to go, but I ain’t making any promises,” Dale says.

Eddy looks relieved. “And we get our first day off on Monday, so it’s into town on Sunday night!”

11. Four days later July 28th, 1974

They head into Price as soon as the mules are unloaded and hobbled in the field, but it gets dark when they drive into the narrow, overgrown road through the dense forest. The passage seems more ominous in the dark, the headlights exaggerating potholes and roots in the road and the branches of the towering evergreen scratching against their windows. Brad is relieved to get on the twisting, deteriorating paved road at the burned-out lumber mill. It’s another hour to Antelope Road and the final stretch into Price, a small town of immaculate, substantial brick houses and hard-working people, most of them blond haired, blue eyed Scandinavians, situated in a lush valley of neat farmland. The hippies ride in silence, but once on the streets of Price Eddy says, “Think anybody in this fucking town will talk to us?”

“Don’t get any ideas, Eddy,” Dale says. “Take it fucking easy.”

Jake adds, “That’s why Boog gives us Monday’s off.  Nobody in Utah is going to party on Sunday night, so we won’t get home too late and we’ll still be good for work come Tuesday morning.”

They stop at a station for gas. The attendant is not exactly unfriendly, but he is wary of the longhaired, bearded freaks. They get the same cautious looks when they shop for groceries at the local super-market. No one confronts them. The salespeople are polite, but they avoid contact of any kind, even eye contact, and customers keep their distance. Dale keeps a tight eye on Eddy who seems, at any moment, about to confront one of them.

They drive around Price looking for a bar or a pool hall or someplace to hang out. There is one hotel and a couple of small restaurants, but no alcohol. Finally, they find the one bar in Price, across the railroad tracks, in a small wooden building sitting by itself with a tiny neon sign that reads “Bar.” It might as well have read “Sin.” A few tables, six stools in front of a small bar, and on Sunday nights it’s empty. The bar serves miniature bottles of booze like those sold in mini-bars or given out on airplanes, one at a time, along with mixers. The bartender introduces himself as Tom Watkins, who greets them warmly and then mutters loud enough for them to hear, “Mondays off. What kind of a jerk has you spend Sunday night partying in Utah?”

The keep drinking, listening to the juke box, swapping stories about even worse times.

“How come you treat us so good?” Dale asks later in the evening.

“I just want you to know that not everyone in Utah is an asshole.”

Friendly though Tom Watkins is, after a couple of hours drinking, the hippies are sick of him and each other’s company. What’s the point? They pay their tab at about 11:00 pm and leave. Eddy insists on driving and says he’ll find some place for another drink, but his circuit of Price’s streets yields up nothing new and he turns the driving over to Brad.

The trip back to camp is gloomy. “Having fun yet?” Dale asks sarcastically. He’s in the front seat next to Brad as they head up the twisting road toward the abandoned mill.

“Fuck you,” Eddy says.

“Ever feel like the feared outsider, the unwanted immigrant, the hobo chased from place to place in his own country?” Jake asks.

“They weren’t mean,” Brad says.

“No but they sure weren’t friendly either,” Eddy says.

Brad turns off the mill road into the dark forest after midnight. Under the trees, the little light from the moon is gone entirely and Brad navigates slowly down the forest trail in the dim VW headlights.

“I should feel like I’m getting away from something, going back to camp, but it’s like, I don’t know, going to something even worse.” Dale says.

“It’s just work,” Jake says.

“It’s fucking humiliating, is what it is,” Dale replies. Jake looks as if he’d like to say something, but keeps his mouth shut.

12. The next morning, July 30th, 1974

They sleep in on their first day off. When they wake up, Boog and his cowboys are gone. The hippies have the high meadow to themselves. It’s a welcome day of rest, washing clothes, airing out sleeping bags, sweeping the tent, collecting firewood for the week, preparing a plump chicken and grilling it over coals, roasted and peeled, spicy New Mexico chili peppers cooked with onions and garlic and a pot of pinto beans.  Dale bakes a platter of brownies while they eat their chicken and drink bottles of cold beer. They go to sleep early, before Boog is back, and Dale is up and getting dressed the next morning when Boog sticks his head in to yell at them. Dale notes with pleasure the surprise and disappointment on Boog’s face.

When he joins them for the trek to the fence line Boog lectures them. “Hard news is, we’re behind. We gotta make 110 a day, or we’re gonna have to lose our days off, so let’s get crackin’ today.”

Boog sees a problem when the crews start working. After only a week, it’s clear the hippies work well and quickly together without supervision, and the best his two cowboys can do is help out. Another man might be thankful but Boog is torn. Sure, they do the work, but without a hold over them, he can’t get their respect. Eddy’s no problem. He’s an ex-con. And Brad is a kid so who cares what he thinks. But Jake and Dale just don’t respect him, and Dale is the zealot who has to push it, and it drives Boog crazy.

Dale can’t help himself. All he has left to feel good about himself is his useless integrity. Deep down, maybe below the level of consciousness, Dale knows he’s damn well smarter than the fucking West Texas cowboy. Without that subtle feeling of superiority, he really would be nothing but a desperate wetback.

The work gets done but the duel between Boog and Dale is never ending if unacknowledged. “How’s your philosophy this morning?” Boog likes to ask. “This will get you a lot stronger than giving any lecture. Of course, no sweet pussy up here. Hell, me and the boys found some cowgirls in town, riders and everything so it was one hell of a day off. How you boys do?” Dale never answers.

The days go by. Another week, another day off, as uneventful and depressing as the last one. Dale doesn’t go with them on their third day off. He assembles a collapsible casting rod he carries in his duffle bag along with a box of dry flies, spools of leader, a knife and a small knapsack. He gets up before dawn and hikes down to the Green River tributary where he spends the day fishing, Zen like in the focus it requires, reading the water, dropping the fly behind a boulder or above a deep hole along the bank ahead of the line, setting the hook and bringing the fish in gently enough to avoid breaking the thin leader. He comes back to camp before dinner with eight fat, 16 to 18-inch Rainbow trout and he had released twice that many smaller ones. They have a feast.

The harassment starts again the next day. Boog has taken to calling Jake Rocket Scientist, Brad is Baby Face, Eddy is Shorty and Dale gets called Professor. “Pick up the pace, Professor. What the fuck you think I’m paying you for Shorty? You know how to wipe your ass, Baby Face? Rocket Science can’t figure out how to get a log around a tree stump?” are some of the taunts that Boog throws out. His favorites revolve around sex, the sex he claims he and cowboys are getting while the hippies are not getting anything. “Boy them cowgirls were something. You know, galloping around with that saddle bouncing up and down between their legs, that gets them so damn hot.” It makes Dale think of Cindy riding with Skip.

“Looks like you went fishing, Professor. Guess the fish smells are about as close as he’ll get to the real thing, boys!” Which brings a good laugh from the cowboys.

“Can’t you hang it up sometimes,” Jake says.

13. Three weeks later, August 1974

The fence is running across a slightly graded open forest and the work is going quickly. The change in the hippies’ is dramatic. They have bulked up after six weeks of brutally hard work. Not a muscle hurts. They swing chain saws around like kitchen paring knifes and trees drop one after the other like stalks of celery. The sixty-foot trees crash to the forest floor missing other cutters by only a few feet and no one seems to notice. “Eighty-five,” Dale yells, “I’m going for a hundred and five!” Jake laughs and shouts he’ll get there first. Eddy and Brad handle the mules with ease, wrapping the drag chain around three logs at a time and encouraging the animals forward with a flip of their harnesses.

Thirty logs have been dumped at strategic intervals along the fence line, and they stop cutting and dragging to lift the logs and spike them in place. Boog and the cowboys are a hundred yards away, clearing heavy brush as the fence line heads back into the denser forest. A half dozen Ute Indians appear on the other side of the fence, laughing. They are short, stocky, dark skinned, heavy set men. Eddy comes up behind Brad with a last load of logs. “What the fuck you laughing at?” Eddy asks. The Ute seem even more amused. “You laughing at me?” Eddy asks.

“Take it easy,” Dale says.

One of the Ute says, “You just so stupid.”

“What are you talking about?” Dale asks.

“You even know why you’re building this fence?” The Ute stares at Dale, then looks from one to the other. They all remain silent.  

“Never thought about it,” Brad says.

“Forest Service wants to keep Ute ponies off the land so they can rent it to Texans to run their cattle. Course it’s really all Ute land and the cattle are bad for the forest. But here’s what’s so stupid. You build a hundred miles of worm fence, we take out three logs … three logs … that’s all … right here … far away from any road, and our ponies will find the gap, go on through and feed on Forest Service land all they want, so this is all just useless work. Won’t help anyone,” and they shake their heads at the stupidity of the white man.

     That night, the hippies sit around their campfire, the remnants of a decent meal not yet cleared up, each with a beer in his hand. They are out of dope and are complaining about it. Dale is out of sorts as usual and changes the subject. “So they told us this whole fucking job is totally useless,” he says with some surprise.

“Makes perfect sense,” Jake says.

“That’s why Boog don’t mind cutting corners.” Brad says.

“Bullshit,” Eddy growls. “Boog don’t give a shit about quality. It’s just money to him. Hey, probably the Forest Service knows it too. Just building the fence to fool the Texans who are too stupid to think about it.”

“I hate all the dead trees we’re using out there, away from the roads, stuffing the hollow ends with mud,” Jake says. He smiles. “Even if it doesn’t make any difference.”

“If Boog’s ripping off the Forest Service, he’s ripping us off as well. Guarantee it,” Dale says.

“So what?” Jake asks.

“I wanta see the books,” Dale says.

“We saw them,” Brad says.

“No. The real books, those are just the one’s he shows us.”

“He’s got another set. Guarantee it,” Eddy jumps in.

“What do you mean?” Brad asks.

“Gotta be two sets. One he shows us and one for real,” Dale says.

 “They’re in town tonight. I can get in that RV easy,” Eddy says. “I used to do it for a living.” He laughs and jumps up excitedly. “Come on!”

“This is not such a good idea,” Jake says, without moving from the campfire. But after some hesitation, the others stand up and head toward the RV. Eddy is in the lead and he picks up the pace as they approach the door. He pulls out his pocketknife and extracts a thin blade, designed to pick teeth. While Brad holds a flashlight on the lock, Eddy goes to work.

“This is really a bad idea, guys,” Jake says as he joins them. “If they come back and find us here …”  Before he can finish the sentence, the cowboy’s pickup truck crests the ridge and headlights sweep down toward the RV. The hippies are on the far side and they begin to run back toward their camp.  They try to stay in the shadow but headlights catche Eddy’s back as he sprints into the darkness.

14. The next morning. September 10th, 1974

Jake is dousing the morning fire when Boog and the cowboys walk into their camp. The good will – or at least the lack of confrontation – that had characterized the last few weeks is gone. Boog is angry. “You creeping around the RV last night Eddy? I seen you. I checked and nothing missing, but I know where you been, and I’ll have the goddam sheriff on you so fucking fast you won’t know what hit you, if I ever catch you anywhere near that RV again. If I didn’t need you for work, I’d throw your sorry ass out of here.”

The cowboys are all puffed up, trying to look as intimidating as possible, but the dynamic between the groups has changed. The hippies are physical equals at least to the cowboys and there are four of them. Boog is pissed, but he backs off and says, “You all better keep this boy in line or I’ll have the sheriff out here.” Then he becomes more aggressive again. “You boys just fucking do your work and stay where you all belong.” He storms away to lead them to the fence line.

When Boog yells “Pay time starts,” Dale practically loses it. “Fuckin’ son of bitch, this get more wrong every day.” About an hour into the workday, without any discussion, the hippies slow down. Dale cuts down a tree, turns off the chain saw and sits on a stump. Then he fires the saw up and carefully measures out sixteen feet and make a cut. He trims the branches with meticulous care, making sure the branch ends are flush with the trunk and makes another cut sixteen feet further up. He shuts off the chain saw again and puts it down, then carefully checks the chain’s cutting edge. Brad is back, but instead of loading the logs he takes a break, gives the mule water and a little hay, chats with Dale.

  Boog storms in. “I don’t hear no chain saw, I don’t see no work, and I don’t give no pay for sitting around. You boys don’t want to work you can just stay home, jerk off and shit in bucket. Now move it.”

Jake has joined them. “Look Boog, it's the first day of week, we’re just getting back into it. We’ll meet your quota.”

“One hundred and twenty sections, I’m counting the sections, before we quit. Goin’ to be a bitch going back in the dark,” Boog says. He turns and leaves. 

Dale looks at Jake. “That’s twenty more than when we started. I think I’ll kill the son of bitch.”

The fence line is moving through open forest, and they make their new quota with about another half hour’s work. Boog and Jim stay far ahead, clearing the fence line. Chris frequently comes back and works with the hippies, stabilizing the logs while they spike them in. Boog still comes back to inspect, but for the most part he keeps his thoughts to himself, except he can’t help staring at Dale as if a steady gaze could incinerate the arrogant son of bitch.

15. Two weeks later. September 22nd, 1974.

On their next night in Price, things finally change. Tom has let friends know that four free spending young men are in town looking for action and that night two young women come into the bar and sit at one of the tables. Hannah is an attractive blond, running a little on the heavy side and Eliza is her nerdy looking companion. Brad makes the first move, and with his big, slightly goofy grin, asks if he can buy them a drink. The hippies put two tables together with some chairs and plug quarters into the juke box, which pumps out dance music. They take turns dancing with the girls as the miniature bottles pile up.

Hannah fixes on Brad, and they get hot and heavy as the evening wears down. Although Eliza keeps her distance, she’s interesting to talk to and fun to hang out with. The hippies are finally having a good time in Utah. Pretty well soused and finally exhausted, they slump around the table in a tired glow of satisfaction. Hannah cuddles on Brad’s lap. “If we had a doobie this would be perfect.” Dale says.

“You want to score?” Hannah asks.

“Are you kidding?  We ran out weeks ago,” Dale says.

“I got a friend,” Hannah says. “Let me see what I can set up.”

16. A week Later October 1st, 1974

The hippies are sitting around with a can of beer in their hands. “Anyone getting high yet?” Dale asks. The other three look disconsolate. 

“So we’re moving tomorrow,” Jake says.

“That’s the plan,” Eddy replies.

“We been in Utah for eight weeks, most of it without dope,” Dale says.

“More than half way home,” Jake says

“Fucking Hannah keeps saying she’ll connect us,” Eddie says.

“She will,” Brad says.

“Yeah, maybe Christmas,” Eddy replies.

“And we don’t get paid for a moving day?” Dale asks.

“That’s also true,” Eddy says.

“I can’t do this anymore. I got to bail.” Dale says.

“That’s all you say any more,” Eddy complains.

“Fuck you,” Dale says.

“Where are you going to bail to?” Jake asks.

“The fucking job is shit. We’re building a lousy fence that won’t do any good, getting paid shit wages. It’s doing something you don’t believe in for the fucking man!” Dale sounds in despair. Nobody says anything.

“You’re the one whose talking about quitting the farm, going back to the cities. Not me,” Jake says.

“Well if you’re going to suck the tit you might as well get a rich one to suck.”

“It's just a job,” Eddy says.

“It ain’t that hard anymore,” Brad says.         

“Come on Dale, your’re not selling out. It’s just a strategy. When I left Rayethon, I didn’t just walk out.  I stayed six more months to build up a nest egg, get out of a marriage that wasn’t working and figure out where to go. That’s what we’re doing here. We’re making it possible to keep on dropping out,” Jake says.

“By dropping in while sucking on the tit?” Dale asks. “Fuck it. Let him finish his own damn fence. When we’re in town next I’m bailing.”

“You’re staying,” Eddy says. “We’re not carrying your weight. It’ll just take us longer and I want to get out of here as much as you do. We’re in this together.”

“Well you don’t tell me what to do,” Dale says standing up and towering over Eddy. “You got me into this shit hole mess.”

Eddy also stands up. He’s a good six inches shorter than Dale, but he has a mean, unafraid look on his face. “You move on me, I don't fight to hurt. I fight crazy. Something a little guy learns in the pen.”

Jake moves between them. “Stop it. Right now.”

After a pause, Dale sits down and with a hint of aggression to mask his defeat he says, “He’s got to pay us for the moving day.”

“It’s not going to happen, buddy,” Eddy says.

“Then that’s it,” Dale answers.

17. The next day off, October 6th, 1974

On their next day off at the bar in Price, shortly before midnight, Hannah uses the bar phone to set up a meeting and after profuse thanks to the bartender and an outrageous tip, they leave and pile into the van. Hannah sits on Brad’s lap in front while Eddy drives. Eliza squeezes between Dale and Jake in the back seat.

The motel is a seedy one just outside Price. Hannah, Eliza, Brad and Eddy stay in the VW while Dale and Jake knock on Room 103. “Come in,” someone says. The motel room is dark and dingy. The drug dealer is small, sharp looking in his early forties wearing a leather jacket. He’s sitting on the edge of a chair across the room. His partner, an older and tougher enforcer, stands next to the door, his arms crossed. He doesn’t say a word. Jake and Dale sit next to each other on the bed.

The dealer pulls out a small bag of dope and says he’d like to give Jake and Dale a taste before they do the deal. He rolls a joint and passes it to Dale who takes one hit and almost vomits. “What the fuck is this?” Dale asks.  

“We always spray it with Raid (an insect repellent) to give it a bigger kick,” the dealer replies.

“Is that all you have,” Dale asks with disgust.  The dealer shrugs. He looks at his buddy near the door. For a moment Jake and Dale both sense a wrong note. “We have friends waiting in a car outside. We need to get back to them right now,” Jake says as he stands up.

The dealer’s buddy waits a moment, then steps aside and opens the door, giving Dale and Jake a smile as they leave. He speaks for the first time. “See you around.”

Jake and Dale get back in the car. As they drive into Price Jake says, “That was weird. They spayed the dope with raid. And what was that smile at the end about. ‘See you around.’”

“I don’t know, but that dope was unsmokable. I can’t believe they use that stuff,” Dale replies.

“They don’t,” Hannah says. They look at her in surprise. “Listen. I didn’t want to do this. That’s why I wouldn’t give you their contact before now. I like you guys, and I didn’t want to hurt you, but they made me do it. I am so sorry guys. I set you up. They spray it because they’re cops and that’s the law. They’ve been watching you for a while. I got busted for weed, and they made me spy on you to avoid jail time. They thought you were big time dealers who were pretending you wanted to buy dope only to find people you could sell to.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dale says.

“Why didn’t they arrest us?” Jake asked.

“Maybe they think they can still get you. I know they talked to the guy who runs your camp,” Hannah said.

“Boog?” Jake asks.

“Boog talked to them?” Dale asks.

“Yeah. That’s the name. I was in their office getting instructions for tonight when I heard his name,” Hannah replies.

18. Two days later, October 8th, 1974

The pre-dawn light reveals the RV and tent camp in a new location, a smaller meadow surrounded by trees, in a small valley below the pass. The mules are in camp all loaded and ready to go, the hippies’ fire is out when Boog and his cowboys walk up. Boog has a rare smile on his face.  “Four weeks left and it’s all across an open plateau, but we got five weeks of fence to build and a Forest Service inspection, so make these sections look good!”

Dale gives Boog a “fuck you” look and starts to turn away. Boog grabs him by the shoulder and spins him face to face. “You boys fucked up big time, didn’t you?”

“What are you talking about?” Dale asks.

“Tried to buy marijuana from a local sheriff. That’s sure jail time here in Utah, and yet he didn’t bust you. How come? You want to know how come?”

“How come.” Jake asks.

“Because I told him I needed you to finish a job, but as soon as it’s over you're his fresh meat. Once off this mountain you boys going to spend a little time with Utah’s finest.”

“We didn’t do nothing,” Brad says. “We didn’t buy anything.”

“Common. You think that matters in Utah? They’re sheriffs. Anyway, you already got a record of pissing in public. Now let’s stop the bullshitting and get some real work done for a change. It’s 120 sections a day now until we finish and no more days off and that means Beanee Weenees and you better like ‘em. Better fucking get to work and double down,” Boog says before he swaggers away to lead them to the fence line. His two cowboys follow.  The hippies wait a moment, then Jake moves out. Dale follows, and Eddy and Brad lead the mules behind them.

“What the fuck he getting in our face for, we been busting ass all summer and he knows it,” Dale says to Jake’s back as they plod forward.

“Just jerking your chain, but that sheriff stuff …” Jake says over his shoulder.

“He’ll push one too many buttons. I ain’t afraid of him.” Dale says.

Jake slows and turns to look Dale in the face, “Boog would be handful. He’s a big mother fucker.” Dale doesn’t reply, stumbles, and looks down at the trail. “You think tht’s true about the sheriff?”

“I don’t know. Seems like we’re small folk. But I don’t know.”

Boog’s attitude doesn’t improve at the fence line. He sends his cowboys ahead to prepare the ground. Only a few small trees and some brush has be cleared in the open meadow. Boog starts supervising every move the hippies make, ridding them to get the respect he feels they’ve never really given him.

“Swing a little harder you can drive that spike in with three blows,” Boog tells Dale.

Dale stops working and look at Boog. “I’ve been doing this all summer, Boog. Thanks for your suggestions, but I really don’t need the help.”

“Then how come we’re running behind, how come you can’t keep up the pace.”

“We're keeping up the pace. We got here a month after the contract began. You know that,” Dale replies.

Boog ignores Dale and goes on to Jake, who is leading a mule dragging five poles up to the fence line. “You oughta be dragging at least six, we’re fucking behind Jake,” Boog say

“Boog, we tried six. Mules balked, wouldn’t keep the tension steady and a log would slip out, we’d have to stop, reload, prod ‘em to get ‘em going again. It ends up being quicker with five. Want to fucking help me with the chain, boss.” Jake answers with a slight taint of disrespect.

“You boys just watch yourself. I’ll be back. We need 120 sections today and I hate working in the dark,” Boog says. He heads back toward camp with his sidekick cowboys. “We’ll be back,” he says again over his shoulder. “I guess you don’t have much choice any more, do you?” Boog laughs as he and his cowboys walk away.

As soon as Boog crests the hill and disappears the hippies tie up the mules and sit down to eat lunch in an open spot on the Ute side of the fence. “I’m barely holding on,” Dale says. We’re not doing Beanee Weenies. I don’t know why I didn’t leave, but after the bust … I don’t know. Maybe solidarity or something.”

“Four weeks Dale,” Eddy replies. “We can get out of here.”

“He’s really got a bug up his ass today,” Jake says

“Four fucking weeks,” Brad says

 The Ute come back while they’re eating. “What you doin’ on our land?” one asks.

The hippies stand up and grab their lunches. Jake says, “Sorry. We weren't even thinking.” He pauses. “We do all our cutting on our own side, you know, don’t you?”

“We check,” the Ute says.

“Thanks,” Brad says, “We’re sorry about the fence.” 

The Ute just stare at them, and then one of them says solemnly. “You better get out of these mountains. Lots of snow. Major storm coming.”

“When?” Jake asks.

“Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the next day,” the Ute answers.

19. That night, October 8th, 1974

When the hippies get back to camp after dark that night, Boog’s pickup truck is gone. As they tether the mules at the staging point, Eddy bolts off and is soon at the RV door with his lock pick. “No, not fucking again,” Jake yells.

“Brad go up on the ridge where you can see the road.  Signal if you them coming,” Dale says.

He heads for the RV. After a moment Jake tags along.  “Jake, stay at the door, will you.  Let us know if Brad signals,” Dale says.

Eddy has gotten past the lock and goes into the RV. Dale follows. The trailer is a big step up from their tents and air mattresses, particularly in the cold nights of October. After a “holy fuck” moment at the trailer’s comfort, they search for the ledger book that Boog consults on payday. They find it in a small drawer next to the bunk beds. The slightly tattered ledger is on top of a second, cleaner ledger, apparently for the forest service. It shows how Boog is paying the hippies much more than he is and that he is barely breaking even on the gig. Squirreled away at the back of the drawer, under a pile of papers, so unobtrusive that they almost miss it, is a third, small notebook where Boog tracks his considerable profit.

They put everything carefully away in its original location, leave the RV, lock it up and after calling Brad down from the ridge, head back to their tents.

Sitting around the campfire, Dale says, “Mother fucker is making really good money. Cowboys are working for peanuts. We’re getting wetback pay. He’s socking it away.”

“I guess it’s not much of a surprise,” Jake says.

“It’s not fair,” Brad says.

“Well, you can’t do anything about it,” Eddy says. “I mean, what are you going to do, report him to the Forest Service? Who gives a shit? Everybody gets what they can.”

“I don’t like getting scammed,” Dale says. “Son of bitch is laughing at us. All the way to the bank.”

20. The next day, October  

The next morning, when light slowly emerges in the East, they see heavy clouds on the horizon. They look up warily as Boog walks up long before they are ready to go. “Storm coming. Maybe before tomorrow morning. We gotta work late tonight, so we’re packing a dinner as well as lunch. We need all the kerosene lanterns you got. If we get enough poles to the fence we can spike ‘em in the dark with the lanterns,” Boog says.

“That’s fucking crazy Boog,” Dale says. “If a storm’s coming, we need to take a day off to get high boots to work in the snow.  We need winter jackets and gloves.  We need to get ready. Ditch our tents, get supplies.”

“We’re fucking working, so do what I say and get ready,” and Boog stalks off. The four hippies are at a boiling point.

Eddy gets a wicked look on his face. He reaches through his jacket into the buttoned pocket of his shirt, where he pulls out the small plastic bag of purple pills. “Fuck it. What have we got to lose. I say we pop one of these.”

Dale with a “who gives a fuck” look takes one. Brad follows. With a shrug, Jake also takes a pill. They dry swallow them as Boog walks up with his cowboys and leads them to the fence line. 

Skirmishes at the border of their vision begin as Boog gets to the fence end. It’s the typical beginning of an acid trip, when strange things start happening just beyond your vision.  The acid hits as they rev up their chain saws.  Soon, Dale, Jake and Eddy are cutting down sixty-foot trees, seeing wood chips flying from the tree trunks like galaxies of brightly colored stars, puked from the heart of the earth into the cosmos. Huge, soft snowflakes drift down out of a quiet sky, cotton candy in a lollypop forest.

Eddy and the three hippies are so closely bound to each other by this time that their work is like a ballet choreographed to the regular rhythms of falling trees and whining chain saws, and the wild exclamations of the four participants. Falling trees become charging bulls in a Spanish corrida, to be narrowly dodged with the flick of a discarded jacket held in one hand like a red cape while in the other a chain saw whirls wildly in the air like a bullfighter’s sword. Brad and Eddy ride their mules like circus performers back from the fence line, trying to stand on their backs, everyone laughing deep from the belly, letting out the tension of a long summer. Or is it burying the civilizing restraints of everyday caution.

The snow is falling more heavily when Boog and the cowboys gather cautiously around them. Boog looks worried. “Something different about you boys today.” 

The hippies continue to work without saying a word.

“I’m talking to you,” Boog says. “Get over here now!”

Dale, who has just felled a tree, feels his stomach flip, smells the sea and passes into tunnel vision. He walks toward Boog with the running chain saw dangling from one hand. Eddy drops in behind him, laughs with maniacal excitement and revs his chainsaw to full speed. Jake drops a tree dangerously close to Boog and his cowboys without warning them.

“Fucking son of a bitch,” Boog says as he jumps backward.  He starts to move around the tree toward the hippies with his eyes blazing and his cowboys follow. Dale raises his chainsaw over his head, turns it up to full speed and walks toward Boog with a steady, determined look on his crazed face.  Eddy raises his chain saw. As if hypnotized, Jake stands and stares with his chain whirling.

“Guys,” Brad shouts from the back of a mule.  

No one hears him. There is suddenly no doubt in Dale’s mind that he will sever Boog’s head from his body with one sweep of the chainsaw. He feels omniscient. His busted water well, his burned barn and his cheating wife have coalesced into the bully now ruining his life and Dale is about to put an end to all of them at once. Boog and the cowboys stop. Boog realizes he is no longer in control. The hippies can do anything they want, deep in the back woods of the Wasatch Mountains, the nearest humans a half day’s drive away, snow drifting from a grey sky, they can wreck whatever vengeance they like. They are suddenly Charles Manson acolytes, revved up on acid and ready to kill.

Boog backs away, turns and with his cowboys well ahead of him heads quickly for the RV.

Dale puts the chain saw down and turns it off. He gazes up into the snow with a look of calm thoughtfulness on his face. “It’s gone. It’s over.”

“What are you talking about?” Jake asks as he and Eddy lower their chainsaws and turn them off.

“What did you guys almost do?” Brad asks.

“All the fury, the feeling of being down in a well, the jealousy. You know there’s either feeling good or feeling bad, don’t matter how you feel bad. It’s all the same. Whether you hate yourself or hate someone else. But I just acted out a murder scene and Boog backed away. I feel like some damn inside me broke, and every muscle can relax. I think it’s called catharsis,” Dale says.

“Jesus Christ, I thought you were going to kill him,” Brad says.

“He’s going for his gun,” Eddy says. “What the fuck we gonna do?”

“What you talking about Dale,” Jake asks.

“Aristotle says that tragedy is ‘an imitation of some ‘event inspiring fear or pity’ and that ‘actions make us happy or the reverse.’ Well I sure as hell inspired fear and I guess I felt pity too.”

“We gotta do something. Now,” Eddy interrupts. “Not the fucking time for philosophy.”

Dale seems in a trance, but Jake replies, “Well, go see what he’s doing. If he’s got the gun come back and tell us. He could be going to Price to get the sheriff. In which case, start packing the van and we’ll get the hell out of here.” Eddy and Brad turn to head off. “We’ll bring in the mules. I can’t leave them out in a storm,” Jake continues.

Jake turns back to Dale when they leave. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, but we gotta get out of here,” Jake says. They gather up the chainsaws and pack the mules. “Anyway, it wasn’t a real tragedy. Nobody died.”

“It’ was just a play, Jake. But through pity and fear I’ve had a catharsis. I have been purged,” Dale says.

“Well, I guess we’ll see about that,” Jake says.

An inch of snow has fallen by the time they reach camp.  The tents are down, the van is being packed. “Mother fucker,” Eddy says. “We can’t go through Price and that’s the only way out of here.  There’s only one road, and they’ll be on it looking for us. We’re fucked.”

“I been thinking about that. We can go through the Ute reservation,” Dale says. They stare at him. “Those guys didn’t ride horses to the fence line, and they didn’t walk very far, I can tell you that. There’s a road out there somewhere, and it can’t be too far from the fence. If the snow keeps up, it’ll bury our car tracks and they won’t know where we went. We will have disappeared,” Dale adds.

“They’ll figure it out,” Eddy says. “But it may not help them that much.”

It’s a hairy drive across the plateau in the VW van with its small wheels, but the van is heavily loaded which helps the traction and with lots of pushing, they make it to the end of the fence line. The snow is piling up in the meadow but fortunately not yet heavy under the Douglas Firs on the Ute side. It takes scouting and several false starts, but in less than a hundred yards from the fence, they find a narrow dirt logging road on the Ute reservation. Almost a foot of heavy snow has fallen by the time they reach a larger dirt road with one plowed track. About a mile in they are stopped by a pickup truck full of Ute. “What are you doing here? We told you to stay off our land,” one of them says.

“We had a fight with the boss, and he went to Price to get the sheriff. They’re going to block the road, and we thought maybe we could make it through the reservation …” Dale trails off.

“You running from the sheriff?” one of the Ute asks.

“Well, our boss treated us pretty bad, and we kind of lost it. He might of thought we were going to kill him with our chain saw,” Dale says, laughing nervously. He gestures with his arms as if wielding a chain saw with murderous intent.

The Ute look at him astounded, look at each other and begin to laugh. It seems like a great joke to them. “I wish I could have seen that,” one of them says, and they chatter in Ute and laugh among themselves, until they finally welcome the hippies. “We can get you west through the reservation out to Spanish Fort on Highway 15,” they say.

20. Later that day, October 9th.

Brad drives. Jake is behind him. Dale is in the front passenger seat. Jake asks, “What do you think?  We could go to Salt Lake, switch plates on the van and then sell it, buy another and we’re home free.”

“We can’t get much for this wreck and anything better will cost too much. We’ve been sending money home. What we all got between us? Maybe $800. Anyway, I don’t think we have to. Boog would get the sheriff on us, but he’s not going to make a state-wide deal of it. Too much paperwork. Too many cops looking into too many everything. He’ll bitch and moan, finish the job with his cowboys, might look for Eddy after he finished,” Dale laughs, “but I don’t think he’ll go beyond the sheriff with the law.”

They ride in silence.

“I’m still not going back,” Dale says.

“Oh Common,” Jake says. “Not this again.”

“Here’s the thing. I finally feel good about myself. I feel maybe I could do something. But I’m just scared I’ll lose all that if I go back to the same old, same old.”

“You’re stronger than that,” Jake says.

But Dale is adamant. They drop him off at the Greyhound bus station in Green River, Utah, on Interstate 7, above a high desert basin at the southern end of the Wasatch Mountains. 

Dale wanders aimlessly around the small waiting room, reads a commemorative plaque honoring Verner von Braun, inventor of the V2 rocket that reigned terror over Great Britain during World War II. Von Braun had been a member of the Nazi Party and he built his rockets with slave labor, more of whom died than the British people they were designed to kill. But the Americans wanted his rocket expertise, and they snatched him and 120 other German scientists in 1945 and brought him to Utah to work on American missiles. The plague of appreciation was dedicated to Von Braun.

Dale looks at bus schedules. He feels good about himself, strong and healthy with an unfamiliar feeling of being large and muscular. If people don’t like his long hair and beard, his earing and his rough working clothes, well he could see with surprising satisfaction that he intimidated them. He likes the feeling of physical invulnerability, but not the slightly contemptuous fear he sees in other people.

Dale goes into the adjoining coffee shop and sits at a small table for two. He orders coffee and a donut. Doodling on a napkin, he draws two arrows pointing in opposite directions and puts a large question mark between them. He stares at the napkin for a while, drinks his coffee, writes “freedom” under the arrows and laughs to himself.

The juke box plays Glenn Campbell singing Rhinestone Cowboy. Dale pays for the food, walks out and heads to the station ticket counter. He buys a bus ticket to New York City and sits on a bench with his small knapsack between his legs. Freedom, as Janis Joplin sang, means nothing left to lose, and he’s got exactly nothing but his tiny backpack. He’s as free as he will ever be, but he feels miserable.

The bus to New York pulls in. Dale watches the passengers unload, some heading to cars, some waving to taxis, some going into the coffee shop for a quick snack before the bus takes off again. He gets up but hesitates. What the fuck am I doing, he wonders.

Jake hurries in carrying a paper bag. “Hey man, glad we caught you.” He opens the bag, looks inside and hands it to Dale. It’s filled with large peyote buttons. “We got to talking about you on the way out of town, and we didn’t want you to forget about us, so we’re sending you off with these.”

Dale looks at Jake with huge relief. “You came back, man. You really did. It's like a miracle.”

“I ain’t going anywhere. I’m going back with you guys. Skip’s a drifter, he’ll never last. I feel like Odysseus, I need to drive out the suitors and reclaim my wife!  I don’t know if we’ll stay in Llano, but whatever we do, we’re going to do together as a family.”

END