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by David Heiniger
From Tonopah, NV, the small town where young Wally Wanker lived,
it’s a 150 mile drive in any direction to find a place with more people
than jackrabbits or rattle snakes. In such a remote place, he couldn’
t take refuge in anonymity like he might have in the city. Everyone
knew everyone and everyone knew Wally, the weird, overweight
kid with the thick glasses, the flat nose and the C+ IQ.
He was a voracious reader and when he was 11, he discovered the
western writer Edward Abbey, who had a tremendous influence on
young Wally. Most of his days that summer were spent hiking the
desert around Tonopah. He discovered its stark beauty and began
to see himself as a creature of the desert, a survivor in a harsh
environment.
When he was 13, his father took him on a raft trip down the
Colorado River in Southern Utah. For ten days they floated down
Glen Canyon, shooting the white-water, sleeping on the banks of
the mighty river and eating trout that they caught themselves, while
retracing the steps of John Wesley Powell.
The diversity of the area amazed him; from red-rock cliffs and
natural arches cut in sandstone to gentle river beaches and narrow
canyons with walls rising hundreds of feet on either side. And the
colors, the infinite shades of red rock and sandstone contrasting
against the light blue sky like pastels in a watercolor painting. In the
castle rocks rising from the desert floor, he could see the layers of
sediment, one on top of another in varying shades, as if God himself
had written the area’s history there for all to see.
The fertile images and the experience of living in the delicate
ecosystem made a profound impression on young Wally. They were
ten of the best days of his life; ten days in a place where, for the
first time, he knew he belonged. Ten days when his universe was
just as it should be.
On the last day of the trip, they sat by the fire at Kane Creek
Landing and Wally’s father said “Take a good look around son; you
may never see this again.”
“Oh, I’ll see at again, alright, I’m coming back here every chance I
get. When I grow up, I’m going to live here.” Wally replied.
“You won’t see this if you do. They’re building a dam a couple of
miles downstream from here and they’ll flood this all out.”
“All of it?”
“A good portion of what we’ve traveled on this trip will be under
water, part of a huge lake they’re going to call Lake Powell, after
the explorer that discovered it Glen Canyon, Major John Wesley
Powell. The dam’s been under construction since ‘56 but the area
won’t be flooded for another 3 or 4 years.”
Wally was crushed. He’d finally found where he belonged and it was
about to be destroyed. How could he have seen all the construction
going on during the trip and not even wondered what it was about?
He felt foolish for not questioning and vowed to be more observant
and more curious from now on. He had never heard of John Wesley
Powell or of Glen Canyon Dam, but you could damn sure bet that he
would find out about them real quick. They were naming the project
after Major Powell that would destroy his discovery? It made no
sense to him.
Wally slept fitfully that night, tossing and turning in his sleeping bag.
In his dreams, he was standing on the Kaiparowits Plateau, two
thousand feet above Glen Canyon, in the bright sunshine. He heard
a tremendous noise and saw a huge wall of water crashing toward
him, about to sweep him away and drown him in his personal
apocalypse.
He woke with a start, gasping for breath, heart pounding. He lay still
in his sleeping bag for a long time, waiting for his heart to return to a
normal pace. Then, in a moment of clarity, it hit him; he knew what
he was supposed to do with his life. In 1962, at thirteen years old,
before the world even knew what one was, he had become an
environmentalist, and if necessary, an environmental terrorist.
By the summer of 1964, construction on the Glen Canyon Dam was
rapidly approaching completion. Early one June morning, just days
after school ended for the summer, Wally packed his backpack and
quietly slipped out the back door while his parents slept. He walked
down to the highway, stuck his thumb out and two days later he
was on top of a hill north of Page, Arizona, looking through
binoculars at the activity below as Glen Canyon Dam neared it’s final
form.
That night he slipped through the darkness, down the hill, armed for
assault. With his knife, he cut hydraulic lines. He brought sugar for
the fuel tanks, knowing that it would cause the massive engines to
overheat and seize. With his hammer, he flattened connections,
damaged bolt heads and smashed gauges. He opened hoods and
poured sand into crank cases. When the sun came up he was five
miles away, asleep in a cave that had been carved in the sandstone
by the Colorado River in its glory days.
Over the next two weeks, his continued this nocturnal pattern,
striking in different places and adding new twists to his repertoire of
destructive tricks. One morning, after a particularly productive night,
he woke with a start. He was being yanked by the foot of his
sleeping bag into the daylight. The harsh sun stabbed his pupils. His
back bruised and bled as he bounced off jagged rocks and he felt a
warm stream on the back of his head where it had struck a piece of
sandstone.
“Alright, you little piece of shit, the party’s over.” A burly man in a
Sheriff’s uniform yelled. He rolled Wally over and handcuffed him.
“You’re coming with me, you little scum sucking delinquent.”
Wally was taken to the Kane County jail in Kanab, UT because the
little cave he’d been sleeping in was on the Utah side of the border.
For 18 hours he sat, speaking to no one, until he was called in to the
visitor cell where his father waited, white faced and sullen. He
expected to be yelled at, screamed at, knowing that his father
couldn’t possible understand.
“You look awful.” His father said. “Are you OK?”
“Nothing that won’t heal.” Wally said quietly with his head down.
“Son, I brought you up right. I taught you to stand up for what you
believe and I know you think that you were doing just that, but
there is another way. We have a system of laws in the country.
They aren’t perfect and they don’t always work, but without them,
we are cavemen.” A wry smile crossed his lips; the irony of where
his son had been hiding wasn’t lost on him. “Do you understand
what I’m trying to say?”
“I’m not sure.”
“If you really believe in your cause, learn the law. Beat these people
in court, it’s the only chance you have. Otherwise, you’ll spend your
life in jails like this one and the dams will still go up. Son, I’m proud of
you for standing up for what you believe, you just should have found
a more appropriate way to do it.”
The fifteen year old in Wally was beginning to bubble to the surface
and his eyes began to water. In a shaky voice, he asked, “What’s
going to happen to me, Dad?”
“I got you an attorney. He tells me that, because you are still a
juvenile and have no history of being in trouble, they’ll probably let
you off pretty light this time. If it happens again, that’s another
story.”
In a matter of days, Wally was driving home with his dad, having
learned his lessons well. Wally had decided to become the first
Wanker with a college degree.
His college years were pretty uneventful. He worked hard and spent
his summers hiking and camping in Southern Utah. Many nights he
slept on the shores of Lake Powell, trying to picture the canyons
below the surface.
It could never be the same, now that the dam was in full operation.
If he blew the dam to smithereens, as he often fantasized that he
one-day would, it wouldn’t matter. A piece of history was gone, lost
forever under a layer of silt. Knowing that the water and electricity
that the dam generated went to Southern California was like salt in
his wounds. Glen Canyon was gone so that lights stayed lit in
Hollyweird.
Just after Wally graduated from law school, he got married. His new
bride was a working class girl who was mostly attracted to him
because he was about to become an attorney and everyone knew
that attorneys made a lot of money. She expected a carefree life on
easy street but, even after he passed the bar on his third try, Wally
wasn’t that kind of attorney. She packed her bags once it was clear
that the easy life she’d dreamed of was not in the cards.
It wasn’t that Wally didn’t have clients; he had more of them than he
knew what to do with. It was that most of his clients couldn’t pay.
He had a strong sense of compassion for anyone in need and their
ability to pay just didn’t factor in.
What money he did make, he spent on his favorite environmental
causes. He was a man driven by his passion for just causes and
there was no cause more just than preserving the earth for future
generations. The big money that he was always fighting in court
could afford batteries of lawyers and it was tough for a lone
attorney to take them on. That didn’t stop Wally and he won his fair
share of cases, all things considered.
As the seventies wore on, his frustrations grew. Despite winning a
few battles, the war was slipping away. Emotionally, Wally had
always lived perilously close to the edge, but in 1975, when Ed
Abbey published “The Monkey Wrench Gang”, he slipped over.
Wally read the book over and over until he could recite entire
chapters. The book was about a group of people who try to stop the
construction of the Glen Canyon Dam by sabotaging, or “monkey
wrenching” the construction equipment. Wally was convinced that
Mr. Abbey must have been inspired to write the book by reading
news accounts of his escapades years before. It was obvious to
Wally that the Hayduke character was himself.
Hayduke was an ex-Marine just back from the war. He was an
earthy, even crude character with no social skills and no sense of
purpose until he fell into The Monkey Wrench Gang. The gang and
their work gave meaning to an otherwise meaningless life and
Hayduke became the most fearless, single minded warrior they had.
The parallels Wally saw between Hayduke and himself were
uncanny.
Wally thought about the book constantly and began to emulate
Hayduke. By 1980, he was wearing camouflage clothing and a
bandana and driving an old, beat up Jeep, just as Hayduke did. He
practiced law less and less and drank beer and slept in the desert
more and more. When he lost his house, the only asset he had, the
transformation was complete. He preferred not to think of himself
as homeless; his home was the entirety of Southern Utah.
Wally slept under the stars and pondered what to do next. Maybe
his Dad had been wrong all those years ago. Maybe his little exploits
had been more than the pranks of a misguided fifteen year old.
They had inspired the greatest writer of all time to write about him,
hadn’t they? One thing was clear, terrorism got attention, and court
action had gotten him nowhere.
As the days and weeks went by, he pondered such things, until, in a
moment of clarity just like so many years before, he knew what he
had to do.
The damn dam had to go.
It made a great visual.
Just like the dream he’d had so long ago, about being swept away
by the waters of the mighty Colorado, he pictured all those Southern
California assholes learning to tread water and the liquid wall swept
down on them like the wrath of God. All eight or ten or twenty
million or whatever there were of them; Wanker Stew. His favorite
thing about Hollyweird was that it was downstream.
His time as an attorney had taught him a little. He knew that he’d
have to steal whatever he needed to accomplish the job. Otherwise,
it would be too easy to trace the goods back to him. The key to
successfully accomplishing his little plan was the same as winning in
court: Preparedness, research, doing your homework.
He drove his old Jeep into little towns all over Southern Utah and
broke into Farmer’s Co-op stores, stealing a few cases of fertilizer
and whatever other provisions he happened to need at the time. He
stashed his little cache in the desert, making sure he wasn’t
followed. Having learned from his first crack at terrorism, he made
sure that he slept somewhere far away from his cache of stolen
goods.
Before every job, he spent many hours casing the joint and the
town. There were few cops in most of these small towns and most
had a routine. He made sure that he knew that routine before every
job, he never struck in the same town twice and he never got
greedy. Quick in and quick out, take only what you need; that was
the key to remaining a free man.
When he finally had enough fertilizer and diesel fuel, he stole a
houseboat and loaded it all on board, hauling it in on a stolen two-
ton flatbed GMC truck. He worked through the night loading the
fertilizer and barrels of diesel fuel onto the houseboat, then
returned the truck with a full tank of gas to the farm that he’d stolen
it from. Farmers worked too hard to steal from them without
returning whatever he’d taken.
It was risky, leaving the loaded, stolen boat unattended in the
daylight, but he had no other choice. There was simply too much
work to do to accomplish it all in one night. Nor could he risk sleeping
on the boat during the day and being caught red handed, so he
returned to his cave in the desert for one last days sleep.
Tonight would be the culminating event of his life. When he was in
college, a friend had asked him what he wanted out of life. His
answer surprised even himself. He said, “I want to do something
important, that people will always remember me for. Just one thing
to make sure that people will remember that Wally Wanker once
lived on this planet.”
Wally’s fantasy was about to come to fruition. If he died in the
process, it didn’t matter, he would die fulfilled. The flat nosed misfit
from Tonopah was about to give meaning to his life.
At midnight, Wally crawled to the edge of the butte that overlooked
the little cove where the explosive laden houseboat waited. Lake
Powell was full of tiny, hidden canyons, some still uncharged all
these years later. Some only existed when the water level was
right. He pulled his binoculars from his backpack and surveyed every
inch of ground and water as far as he could see from his vantage
point. This was one of those occasions when he wished he had
better eyesight.
Once he was convinced that the coast was clear, he climbed down
the hill and slipped quietly onto the boat. He wired the timer onto the
starter caps. The initial explosion would set off the fertilizer and
diesel fuel and, in theory, Wally would have his own Big Bang.
When everything was set, he pulled on his life jacket, opened the
fuel cocks and pushed the start button. The sound of the starters
cranking over the two huge diesel motors seemed enormous to
Wally and he felt a chill creeping over his body. His scalp tingled and
his hair felt as though electric current was running through it. He
took the steering wheel in his sweaty, fat little fingers and eased the
huge boat out of the cove and onto the open water for the ten mile
trip to the dam.
As he neared Glen Canyon Dam, he cut the engines, set the timer for
fifteen minutes and dove off the back of the boat into the warm
waters of the soon-to-be-former Lake Powell. The boat would drift
the last two hundred yards under its own inertia, he figured,
allowing him to make his exit before it got too close to the suction
from the huge turbines for him to swim away. If he tried to swim too
close to them, he risked being sucked into the current caused by the
AC generators.
“Oh well,” he sang to himself as he swam away from the boat, “it’s
been a good day in hell.”
The water was moving faster than he’d expected, even this far
away from the turbines and he’d put a good deal of weight on by
1982, all of which mean that he was in danger of not making it to
shore before the houseboat blew. Despite nearly two years of work
and careful planning, he hadn’t realized how tough ten minutes of
hard, nonstop swimming was going to be. He was barely conscious
when he did reach the shore and he’d swallowed a great deal of the
soon-to-be-former lake.
He lay on the shore for a few minutes and then forced himself up
and staggered toward the dirt road a few hundred feet away. His
heart was pounding and his chest felt like it was going to explode.
He could see the road only a few more feet ahead but he didn’t
make it. He laid about ten feet from the road, drifting in and out of
consciousness, when he saw headlights approach. He rolled over
onto his large belly and crawled toward the roadway.
The Toyota pickup stopped, engine running and headlights piercing
the darkness, and two men climbed out.
“Whaddya think, Pete,” the passenger said, “is he alive?”
“Yeah,” Wally groaned, “get me outta here.”
The two men helped Wally to his feet and got him into the cab of the
pickup, which was no easy feat in his condition.
“So what happened to you?” the one called Pete asked. “Your boat
crash or something?”
“No, but it’s about to.” Wally said, slurring his words like a drunk.
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Huh?”
“DRIVE.” Wally shouted with every bit of energy he could muster.
Reacting to the urgency in his voice, Pete put the truck into gear and
took off in a shot. A couple of seconds later, they saw a small flash,
followed by a huge one. A second after that there was a boom, then
a deeper BOOM that shook the ground and rattled the windows of
the little pickup.
“Jesus Christ!” Rudy shouted, “What in the ever-loving hell was
that?”
“Wanker Soup” Wally muttered, grinning to himself in the dark cab.
“Start swimming mother fuckers” he mumbled too quietly for
anyone else to hear.
“Where you guys headed?” Wally asked.
“Salt Lake.” Pete replied.
“Perfect. Wake me up when we get there.”
Pete and Rudy looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.
The sun was coming up and they were nearly in Salt Lake when they
heard the first news reports on the radio.
“A house boat exploded on Lake Powell, near the Glen Canyon Dam
during the night. The boat, which was reported stolen on Thursday,
was loaded with a makeshift bomb of fertilizer and diesel fuel and
was completely destroyed. Authorities say that it appears to have
been an attempt to disrupt the operation of the dam by a radical
environmental group, though no one has yet claimed responsibility
for the blast. The dam was not damaged and there were no injuries.
Police have no solid leads at this time, though they speculate that
this may be connected to a recent rash of burglaries throughout
Southern Utah.”
Wally could feel the eyes of the two men on either side of him. He
opened his eyes. “Don’t look at me; don’t know a thing about it.”
“What do you think, Rudy, do we believe him?” Pete asked.
“Do pigs have wings?” Rudy replied. “Should we turn him in?”
“I’m thinking no harm, no foul.” Pete answered.
Wally took a deep breath, not sure if he was more relieved or
disappointed. One thing he had learned over the years was patience
and he knew that Hayduke would ride again.
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About David Heiniger:
"I live on 3+ acres in Washington that my wife and I have dubbed
QuiXand Ranch (she has the 3 acres, I have the +). She breeds and
races Whippets while I dabble at writing, motorcycle riding and Ice
Cream eating. I am currently working on my first novel and I
manage to work a full time job selling "propane and propane
accessories" between scoops."
Want more? Click here to read
"In the Closet" by David Heiniger!