Durango (3 page)

One of Sheridan's earliest memories was of his father taking him to meet Two Hawks, then a vigorous man in his mid-thirties. He was tall and lean, even then with lined cheeks and narrow hips. The young Sheridan watched with keen eyes as the two men conversed. They spoke in short sentences punctuated by long silences. Their mood was inevitably solemn. Most often, Sheridan's father asked questions and listened quietly as Two Hawks responded.

They talked about ordinary things—weather, water, people, and sometimes current events in the outside world. Occasionally, however, Sheridan observed periods of meditation and quiet communication, almost a kind of worship. Throughout his growing-up years, he went with his father on these sojourns two or three times a year, and he lent himself more easily to the temper and found in the silences—even more than in the conversation—a form of communion. By the time he was an adult and after his father's passing, he assumed this pattern. And he watched Two Hawks grow older, even thinner, and become increasingly a part of all things, animate and inanimate, around him. It seemed that the older the Ute became, the more he merged into his natural environment and became a part of the scrub trees, cactus, birds, wildflowers, and sage that were part of his nature.

A few years before, in the time of the trouble, Sheridan had sought the companionship and wisdom of the aging holy man. Two Hawks had helped save his sanity and possibly even his soul.

Now, the day after the storm, Sheridan parked outside Two Hawks's old house. He waited and watched, as always, patient so as not to intrude on the holy man's space. Before long, he saw the thin arm in the doorway beckoning him inside.

The Ute made tea using local herbs. They sat for a period and thought.

Sheridan said, Did the snow get down this far?

Two Hawks nodded. Some. Not as much as you, though.

Sheridan related the lost cow incident from the previous Friday night.

The mother cow risked her calf's life to see if you really cared about them, Two Hawks said and then chuckled.

She could've found a better way to settle that question, Sheridan said. How are things here? he asked, meaning the reservation.

I am told we are now wealthy people, Two Hawks said. The chairman has done a good job keeping our faith. We are nature's people, not the people of your things. He said “things” in such a way that Sheridan knew he meant cars, appliances, and trinkets.

But all this money will change us…for good and for bad. Our young people will have better learning. Then they will leave this place. We will have better houses. He surveyed his own primitive surroundings. But we will burn more coal to heat and light. We'll have bigger pickups. They will burn more fuel. Humans are the last creatures to learn about the balance in nature. Two Hawks held both hands palms up as if measuring weights on a scale. Every use has a price, he continued. Usually the price is greater than the use we seek. The less necessary the use, the greater the waste.

Will there still be Utes in fifty, a hundred years? Sheridan asked.

Come ask me then, Two Hawks smiled. I will be a juniper down near the Animas…if the Spirit thinks I am worthy.

Sheridan smiled also. Why not a cougar?

Oh, I have not earned a cougar spirit yet. It will take time. Much more than the years I have had. The cougar spirit is very big. He is the chief of these parts. It is a very big spirit. It must be earned.

How do you earn that spirit? Sheridan asked.

Two Hawks looked through the doorway, his stare a hundred miles downrange. Strength. Patience. Courage. Fortitude…a good word. Wisdom. Mostly wisdom.

You seem pretty wise to me, Sheridan offered.

If you were not my good friend, Two Hawks said, I would say that your people's idea of wisdom is pretty thin. Wisdom needs time and patience. It needs thinking. It needs praying. It is a gift, but you must earn this gift.

His voice was reedy and thin, but forceful. His arrow-straight back had begun to bow at the shoulders. His ancient shirt hung on his frame as on a scarecrow. Dust briefly blew past the open doorway. They were silent for a time. Sheridan knew the holy man had something to say.

Two Hawks hummed a chant quietly, as if in a kind of trance. Then he said, The first time it was water. Long ago. When I was a boy, our ancient holy men, older even than I am now, said that the holy men for generations before them, before memory, said the second time would be fire.

Sheridan inhaled and waited.

Fire. Very big fire.

Like a forest fire? Sheridan asked.

Much bigger. Intense fire. Bigger than a mountain blowing up. Man-made. As hot as the sun.

Well, Sheridan said, that has to be something nuclear. He waited and said, Is that it?

Two Hawks shook his head. I don't know. I am told that the nuclear things burn as hot as the sun. I don't know anything else man has created that does. If it burns, it will destroy the whole earth. It will be a judgment. The Spirit will decide things have gone too far. We cannot act as if we were gods. We cannot hold such power.

The government says we're trying to get rid of some of this stuff. The bombs, Sheridan said.

All. It all must be destroyed. Or it will be used. The ancient people said the fire could not be contained if it started. That's all I know.

Two Hawks presently held up a hand. Sheridan had become familiar with this sign. He waited and watched, breathing quietly and looking into the distance. The ancient Ute hummed in rhythm and closed his eyes. After a moment he began a prayer, a prayer for all the creatures, great and small, for the winged things, for the creepy-crawly creatures, for the trees and flowers, for water and wind, for all things in nature. Then he prayed for the people, his own Ute people and people in Durango and wherever there were people. He asked the Spirit's blessing on all things.

Sheridan breathed softly. He knew the rest to come.

Two Hawks asked the Spirit to heal his friend Sheridan. He reminded the Spirit that Sheridan was a worthy man, an honest man. Sheridan and his father and his father's father had been friends to the Utes. Sheridan had earned the Spirit's blessing. Sheridan needed the Spirit's blessing. Then he became silent.

His heart heavy, Sheridan waited in silence. Though burdened by his own history, as always he felt better for the prayer and the blessing. Then both men stood. Two Hawks walked him to the open door. They did not shake hands in the fashion of civilization. But when Sheridan reached his pickup, he turned and held up his hand by way of thanks.

Visions of the fire to end all life had been in the back of Sheridan's mind ever since.

6.

Madam Chairwoman, Sheridan said, we're going to have to resolve the Animas–La Plata issue one of these days. This commission has gone back and forth, up and down, and sooner or later the state and the feds are going to want our judgment on the matter.

Recently elected to the commission at this point years ago, Sheridan would later become its chair.

Mr. Sheridan, said Dolores Raymond, chairwoman of the La Plata County Commission, you know well enough that there are five of us here, and two of us are for it, two of us are against it, and one of us—she looked down the horseshoe-curved table to her right—can't make up his mind.

Well, Sheridan said, our members of Congress have to vote on the funds for the project in next year's budget, and I don't know about you, but they are pestering me for a decision.

Me too, Dolores Raymond said. What's your opinion these days, Mr. Ralph?

The young man on the right end of the table said, Well, as the newest member of the County Commission—he scratched his head—it's still pretty confusing to me. Half the people in my district want it and half don't want it.

Welcome to elective office, Sheridan said.

All but the youngish man smiled, and the reporter for the
Durango Herald
made a note.

The thing is, Ralph said, it does get down to growth or no-growth. I can see how the water helps the energy people and the developers. But like Mrs. Raymond here, I can see, even as a newcomer to this area, how too much, too soon will mess this place up. Like a lot of new people, I came here because Durango and this county are a good place to live and to raise children just the way they are.

Lots of dollars to be made, Mr. Ralph, Sheridan said, by lots of people in the dollar-making business.

Well, you're for the project, Ralph said, and you've lived here forever. How come you're for it?

Sheridan looked at the ceiling with a wry smile, Not quite forever, Mr. Ralph. I'm not Methuselah. Just Methuselah's son. But to answer your question, it's the Utes. Half the people I represent want this project and half don't want it, just like you, but the final straw for me was the Southern Utes getting the water they need to carry out their energy development program, Red Willow, and improve the lives of their people. Simple matter of justice.

In the back of the meeting room, packed with two hundred or so people, sat two men, one about Commissioner Ralph's age, the other a well-turned-out man in his late fifties. Both wore expensive suits and stood out from the everyday La Plata County crowd around them. The younger man took detailed notes. Occasionally they whispered to each other.

The floor was opened for public comment and, as usual, a number of citizens queued at the microphones. As at many commission meetings in the years before, individual comments were about equally divided between those who didn't understand why the “government” didn't just get on with it and build the dam and those who decried the damage to the environment and the quality of life around Durango. Sheridan and the other commissioners listened attentively and sometimes nodded in agreement or disagreement. Once or twice the commissioners asked questions of the more informed citizens or chastised those who chose an extremist stance, one way or the other.

That all occurred some twelve years before. But that evening, and many like it in the monthly county commission cycle, had often crossed Sheridan's mind in the years since. He remembered noting the two well-dressed men, strangers to him, and wondering what had brought them there. Very soon thereafter he was to find out.

In the meantime, the prolonged, troublesome, and divisive Animas–La Plata Dam project had waxed and waned over years and then decades, surviving largely on annual congressional appropriations for “study” funds to keep the project alive another year in the hope that divine intervention or rare human wisdom might resolve it one way or the other.

For the minority of those in the Durango community who did not worry about the project or who tried to find a balance between growth and preservation, the feeling was that a dam of some dimensions would ultimately be built, if for no other reason than because of what came to be shorthanded as the “Sheridan position”: the Southern Utes deserved and needed their fair share of the water stored above the dam. There was some degree of white guilt in this. But the Utes had built up a store of moral capital over many decades, and the issue of justice was a powerful one.

Sheridan often used that word—
justice
—when he could not think of a better one. For him it meant what was right. Though he had a year or so of law school, he did not philosophize about it. And he did not use it to preach. But he did remember a line he had seen on a rare trip to Washington. It was on the wall in the Jefferson Memorial rotunda. “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.” Jefferson's conscience had plagued him about slavery. Sheridan had a similar sense about the Utes.

A few days after that county commission meeting, Sheridan had gotten a call from the younger of the two men who had been at the back of the meeting hall. He called himself Matthew Palmer—just call me Matt—and said that he and his boss, Mr. Stone, would appreciate the pleasure of lunch with Mr. Sheridan. What might this be about? Sheridan had asked. He tried not to sound too wary. Matt Palmer had responded that they wished to discuss the Animas–La Plata project. They certainly shared Mr. Sheridan's concern for the Southern Ute Tribe. They represented a company that wished to help the Utes develop their mineral resources as a means of providing a better life for people too long left out of modern advancement.

On that occasion, Sheridan had chosen not to test the young Palmer's bona fides. But he did, at least in his mind, do what his father had long ago taught him: When you hear some notion that seems too good to be true, put your hand on your wallet.

With a measure of native caution, Sheridan joined the two men at the Strater Hotel dining room for lunch a few days later. As usual, he listened more than he talked.

We liked what you had to say at the commission meeting last week, Mr. Stone said.

Sheridan said politely, May I know who “we” are?

Ah, Mr. Stone said with a chuckle. “We” are a very progressive investment fund. We look at new opportunities, especially in the natural resources area, and try to direct our investors and others toward specific development projects. We have studied the Southern Utes' opportunities and agree with you completely that the Animas–La Plata water is crucial to their success. So, we simply wanted to meet you and offer our support in your efforts.

Sheridan nodded slightly. Very generous of you. Do you mind if I ask a few questions?

Not at all, Stone chuckled. We're used to hard questions in our business.

Have you met with Chairman Cloud, Leonard Cloud, at the reservation headquarters down in Ignacio? Sheridan asked.

Not yet, young Palmer intervened. But we were hoping you might help arrange an introduction. Stone's lips smiled, but his eyes frowned.

You don't need an introduction from me, Sheridan said. The Utes have been waiting for people with money to show up for quite a few years now. Problem is, now that they're trying to take control of their own resources, a whole lot of folks like you are showing up. Don't mean to be impolite, but it's the truth.