Arches Enemy. Scott Graham

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      8

      Two months ago in Durango, over pints at Steamworks, Janelle’s kid brother Clarence had posed a series of questions to Chuck concerning the Arches contract.

      Clarence had followed Janelle to southwest Colorado a year earlier from Albuquerque. A graduate of the University of New Mexico School of Anthropology, Clarence tended bar at Steamworks between stints with Bender Archaeological and other contract archaeology firms in the region, making use of his degree when Chuck or other area companies needed an extra hand on a dig or site survey.

      Tourists and locals alike flocked to Steamworks, Durango’s largest brewpub, housed in a 1920s-era former automobile showroom a block off Main Avenue. Chalk drawings by children covered the polished concrete floor. Muted televisions aired basketball and football games from walls shorn of plaster to reveal the building’s brick walls and ornate iron-lattice framework. Stainless steel air ducts webbed the high ceiling.

      At twenty-eight, Clarence was three years younger than Janelle. He wore a checked flannel shirt over his sizable belly. His shoulder-length black hair, as lustrous as Janelle’s, was tucked behind his ears, revealing large silver studs glittering in both lobes. Deep laugh lines cupped his mouth, enhancing his bright white teeth. His brown eyes glittered almost constantly with mischief.

      “I don’t trust it,” Clarence said to Chuck, his tone unusually serious. “This guy Sanford you’re telling me about, he’s in too much of a hurry.”

      “He says he doesn’t have any choice,” Chuck replied. He took a swallow of his beer. The hazy wheat lager left a tart aftertaste at the back of his throat as he continued. “The Utah legislature convenes in January. The national monuments will be the first thing on the agenda.”

      “I don’t see what that has to do with your contract at this secret site you’re so fired up about.”

      “A coalition of tribes first proposed the monuments in southern Utah. They wanted to protect the sacred lands of their ancestors from bulldozing and drilling. But as soon as the feds created the monuments, Utah’s politicians pushed back, hard, on behalf of their Big Oil masters. They got the size of the monuments reduced by ninety percent. Now they’re talking about wiping out the monuments entirely. They care a lot more about easy oil money than they do about preserving the tribes’ ancestral lands.”

      Clarence aimed a thumb at his face. “Digame, jefe. I already know a lot of them politician types got a problem with me ’cause of my brown skin and my inmigrante parents. It’s the same with them Indian folks, huh?”

      “Well, the ‘Indian folks’—” Chuck made air quotes with his fingers “—sure as hell aren’t immigrants. But as long as there’s money to be made keeping them in their place, politicians will be willing to do it.”

      “Keepin’ ’em down on the rez.”

      Chuck took another sip from his pint and plopped it on the scarred wooden tabletop with a foam-raising thud. “Under thumb and under gun, as the tribes have been saying, ever since the white man showed up out here in the West a hundred and fifty years ago. Which is why, right after the monuments were created, Utah’s politicians had no problem getting the monument borders cut back to practically nothing, indigenous peoples be damned.”

      Clarence tipped his glass on its cardboard coaster in front of him. Bubbles streamed from the bottom of the tumbler in curling lines. He straightened the pint and studied Chuck across the top of it. “And now, you’re saying this discovery in Arches could reverse that?”

      “It’s a long shot, but yes, that’s Sanford’s idea. The tribes and environmentalists have been working together to get the monuments returned to their original size. Petitions, court cases, protest marches—nothing has worked. Then, a few weeks ago, a twelve-year-old girl from New York wandered off the trail in Devil’s Garden and, boom, Sanford saw opportunity knocking.”

      Clarence plucked an unshelled peanut from a wicker basket on the table. He’d filled the basket from a large wooden barrel of the unshelled nuts at the back of the restaurant. The peanuts were offered free by the brewpub to all its patrons. Clarence had worked his way through the basket since returning to the table, cracking open the nuts and dropping the empty shells on the floor beside him.

      “That may be all well and good for him, Chuck, but I gotta be honest—this contract doesn’t sound like you,” Clarence said, opening the shell and tossing the nuts into his mouth. “You always keep your head down. You work your digs and come home to Durango and write up your reports. Then you bid for your next contract and repeat the process, nice and quiet and steady. This thing’s different, though. All the secrecy with this discovery you’re talking about—I mean, it has politics written all over it. It could blow up in your face, big time.”

      A boy of about six walked toward them, a basket of peanuts held chin-high before him in both hands, returning from the barrel in the back of the brewpub. As the youngster passed, Clarence plucked one of the unshelled nuts from the upraised basket.

      “Hey!” The boy turned to face Clarence. His head barely reached the bar-height table at which Clarence and Chuck sat.

      Clarence stuck the pilfered nut behind his ear. Leaning forward from his tall chair, he peered imperiously down at the youngster and held out his empty hands. “Hey what?”

      The boy stared at the peanut, plainly visible between the top of Clarence’s ear and his head. “Give it back.”

      Clarence plucked two peanuts from his basket on the table and dropped them on top of the pile of nuts in the boy’s basket. “Two for one. How’s that?”

      The youngster looked with wide eyes from the newly added nuts to Clarence. “Um, okay, I guess.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

      “Sounds like we got us a deal, then,” Clarence told him. “You’re good now.” He shooed the boy away with both hands. “You can skedaddle. Vamoose. Sayonara. Adiós.”

      Chuck grinned and shook his head at Clarence as the boy returned to his family’s table. “I’m supposed to take advice from the likes of you?”

      Clarence reached over his shoulder and patted himself on the back. “I’m your counselor of all counselors, primo.” He pulled the stolen peanut from behind his ear, cracked it open, and offered Chuck the nuts inside.

      Chuck waved them off and attempted СКАЧАТЬ