Monkey Wrench Gang

The Monkey Wrench Gang

(excerpt)

By Edward Abbey

He turned back on the highway and followed it for another ten miles, driving without lights. Dangerous? Perhaps. But not impossible. Hayduke had not noo much difficulty staying on the road. Bonnie Abbxug chewed her anxious knuckles and offered plenty of unwanted advice, like ”For God's sake turn the light on. You want to get us both killed?” His only immediate worry was horses: hard enough to see horses at night even with the lights.

They arrived at the dirt road leading northeast to Shonto and Betatakin. Hayduke turned and once well away from the state road switched on the lights. They made good time, stopping only at a lonely spot out in the desert, between two wind-stripped, dead and silvery junipers to recover the goods, packed in heavy canvas duffel bags, which the Gang had cached there after the railway bridge operation. That had been Hayduke's idea – he wanted the dynamite in the bags for what he called “sanitary” reasons and for easier backpacking later. Abbzug had salvaged the empty boxes; that was her idea.

As Hayduke loaded the two bulging bags into the rear she again complained, “I'm not going to ride in the same car with that stuff! But again - “Walk then!” - she was overruled. They trundled on. Getting low on fuel. Hayduke stopped under the seats until he found campground at Betatakin. He groped under the seats until he found his Oklahoma cred card, a length of neoprene tubing – My leetle robber hose, senor, as he called it fondly – and disappeared into the darkness with siphon and two gasoline cans.

Bonnie waited, rehearsing once again all the tedious questions about her own sanity. No question at all about that of her companion, or that polygamous jack-Mormon river guide, or poor mad Doc. But what am I doing here? Me, a nice Jewish girl, with an M.A. In Classican (yeah!) French Lit. With a mother who worries about me and a father who makes 40,000 a year. Forty thousand what” Forty thousand ladies' foundation garments, what else. Me, Abbzug. A solid, sensible  gril with a keppela on her shoulders. Running around with these crazy goyim in the middle of Arabia. We'll never get away with it. They got laws.

Hayduke came back, two full cans pulling his arms down straight. Groping again under the front seats-copping as he did a free feel between Bonnie's thighs – he found his spout and poured ten gallons into the tank. Started to walk away again with the empties.

“Where're you going now?”

“Go to fill the auxiliary tank.”

God! Gone. She waited, cursing herself, wanting to sleep and quite unable, dozing in fits and waking up in terror.

Sound and smell of pouring gasoline. They were off again, into the night, running as Hayduke liked it best, full and cool. With transfigured license plates both fore an aft. “We're from South Dakota tonight,” he explained.

Bonnie groaned.

“Relax,” he said, “we're crossing the river soon. We're getting out of this overdeveloped hypercivilized goddamn Indian country. Going back to the canyons where people like us belong. They won't find un is a million years.”

A little lady. Illustration by Elena.