Wrenching by Brian Brown

  Wrenching

   by Brian Brown

     It was crisp and  clear, a winter night as dark as a tomb in the Mojave Desert. A good night for this chore. She parked off the road in a little - used turnout that used to mark a four wheel drive track up into the nearby hills. The road had been abandoned  years before but no matter, it gave her a chance to get her car a bit off of the paved road to the Nearby town in Nevada, maybe ten miles away. It was after 9:00 on a cold winter night, and as she had hoped, traffic was almost non existent. Maybe one car every 20 minutes or more. The new moon was down over the horizon, and the milky way sparkled  across the sky, providing just about enough light to see if one kept their eyes looking into the darkness.

     She quietly got the chainsaw out of the back, having put a fresh battery, a new chain and bar oil in the machine before she left her house. These new electric saws were wonderful; pricey, but the lithium batteries would cut up a surprising amount  of firewood before needing a recharge. More than enough for this. 

     She looked at the ground intently as she started up the alluvial fan. The light from the milky way, some of it arriving after a journey of  hundreds or thousands of light years, provided just enough contrast to let her discern the rocks and  obstacles on the desert floor. Snakes or other creatures were not a concern on a winter’s night, but stumbling into a cholla or yucca would have painful consequences. She picked her way quietly there, enjoying the silence and the bite of the dry cold and the holy light streaming down upon her from the heavens. If there were heavens. She was content to know that it came from distance worlds, regardless if anything else was watching. 

     About 100 yards up the fan she came to the first one. The cheapest kind made, it was simply a couple of 4x4 timbers sunk into the ground, and the face was a slab of plywood. It was painted white with garish red 10 inch letters proclaiming BUY DESERT LAND!! Beneath it was a web address , www.desertforsale.com . My ass, she thought, as she brought the saw to bear and quickly cut the first leg in half 6 inches above the desert floor. She moved to the other leg and did the same, the energetic whine of the electric motor easily amputating the second leg. The sign fell forward with a bit of a clamber, but of course there was no one to hear it. She drug it down into a position laying flat on the desert floor. From the road it and the two stumps would be invisible. 

     She picked her way laterally along the fan for about 150 yards, looked around a bit, and after some cautious circling she came upon the second sign, identical to the first. She repeated the process, and this sign fell backwards, dead on its back. She saw a pair of headlights approaching from the Nevada side, and squatted down below the creosote bushes as it whizzed by at 80, showing no acknowledgement  whatsoever. Good, she thought. That’s good.  

She walked laterally across the the desert back to the car, staying off the roadside so as not to be seen walking with a chainsaw should another car happened along. It did not. She put the saw in the car, started up and headed for the border as another pair of headlights appeared in her mirror, 7 or 8 miles distant. 

     After a quick trip to the grocery store and filling up the car she headed back for home, 45 miles away. She considered her act of vandalism as she drove along . Was it the dusty remnants of a hippy ethic from 50 years ago, when people cared about such things? Was it legitimate protest against a stupid idea? The rest of this sweet little valley was federal land with a designation that would make it difficult to fall into private hands. But this 20 acres had somehow become private, maybe an old mining claim or homestead that had escaped the purging of thousands of bogus and extinct claims to federal lands dating back to Teddy Roosevelt’s term. If it were sold now it would invariably become the recipient of some goober’s aspirational junk pile of nearly dead cars, trailers, used lumber, and god knows what other kind of crap. Her little act of anarchy might slow that down, or maybe even prevent it. 

     A bit of googling had shown her that the real estate company listed on the sign was in fact just a mail box at a UPS store in a small city 250 mils away. It was doubtful they would even find out for weeks or months, and even more doubtful that who ever they were would drive way the hell out here to replace it. Besides, who even cared? No one out here. She pulled into her house a bit after 11:00, awakened by the bite of the dry, cold desert air, and feeling alive as she stared up at the jewelry in the sky, picking out a planet or two and some familiar constellations. She felt good about this. Old Hayduke and Ed Abbey would be proud of her, she knew that. It was a small thing, but it was a good thing. What was that expression, about how the only real changes that have been effective are  by individuals or small groups of people taking action? Something like that. She had done it, and now if she could just keep her mouth shut it would be a Victory. She walked into her cozy little cabin, gave the dog a scratch, and began to build a fire.