Catfantastic: Nine Lives and Fifteen Tales Part 3

He asked me if I'd brought my field gla.s.ses and took me to a spot where we'd be isolated from the other scalers on the tower site and yet could have a clear view down to the construction atop the dam.

I looked where he directed me, although I had no idea what I was searching for. I watched the crew on the section almost directly below me.

Though I'd never worked the cement gangs, I knew what was involved in mixing and pouring concrete for a structure such as this. I'd gained a sense for the rhythms of the work. Things happened in a certain order; the forms went up, the twelve-ton bucket was filled on the canyon rim and dropped on the cableway, the concrete was dumped and spreada"all this the men did quickly, smoothly, and with few unnecessary movements. Thus I was good at detecting even small disruptions, such as the one that occurred when a worker, stopping to glance over his shoulder, slipped his hand into his overall pocket and poked something into the gray cement sludge alongside a coolant pipe.

I noticed something else. As the man shaded his eyes against the sun, I caught a glimpse of leathery skin and a hawklike Indian profile. I felt Mike touch my elbow.

"Put the gla.s.ses down and turn away," he said softly. I did. We both walked away from the edge, leaned against a rock. Mike asked me what I'd seen. I told him.

"'That guy was an Indian, wasn't he?" I asked. "One of your people?"

"No. I'm the only Hopituh on this site. Others Pima, Ilualapai, Navajo."

"Well, he looked to be doing something crooked," I said. "Look, I think we ought to go down there and tell the gang boss."

"No good," Mike said. "I tell you what he find. Something that looks like a pebble."

Now I was completely lost. "Why would someone take all the trouble to plant one rock in a pour that has a million of 'em?"

"Not rock," the Hopi said. "Bead carved from bone. Used to cause people to get sick or bad things to happen."

"He thinks he's putting some kind of hex on the dam?"

"Not just him," Mike answered. "Others. From here, I see. I have sharp eyes. And in town, I hear." I considered his implication of an Indian conspiracy against Black Canyon. If certain workers were planting hidden charges or doing other things that might weaken the dam, that was one thing. But an attack using magic?

"Come on," I said. "Hasn't this gone far enough? I believed you about the bobcat, but I can't accept that anyone can knock down tons of steel and concrete with fetishes and incantations."

For a minute I thought he was going to go all sullen on me, but he only cradled Tonochpa in the crook of his arm and ruffled the place on her neck where the nakwatch lay. Mildly he asked, "Then what does your own magic tell you, white medicine man?"

Those readings. Those d.a.m.ned readings that could mean anything. But I wasn't ready to take Mike's explanation. I was a little angry at him for using my own uncertainties to stampede me toward a ridiculous conclusion.

"I'm sorry," I said to him, a little more curtly than I meant to. "I don't think we're talking the same language, sport. Look, I have to get back to my job."

"It is all right. You must wait and watch. Then you will see."

I only hunched my shoulders and walked away from him, his strange ideas, and his d.a.m.ned bobcat.

It was just past noon on the following day when a worker fell from his scaffold into wet concrete that had just been dumped by the bucket. Rescuers stirred and probed the heavy cement, but the scaffold was so high that the fall took the victim far under the surface and suffocated him before he could claw his way to the top. They could not even recover the body before the cement in the form began to harden.

Though a few roustabouts cursed, the rest shrugged their shoulders and went on with their labor. I knew that men were expendable to Black Canyon; the project consumed them as it did explosives and cement. There was no pause in the work and no investigation.

Two days later a cement pour atop the dam refused to harden. While people were scrambling around trying to figure out why, a scaffold broke and two men fell to their deaths. The only thing anyone found was a strange ring woven of yucca fibers and feathers that floated atop the still-heaving ma.s.s of concrete. And another strain gauge left its previous value and started to drift up.

For some reason, Mike stopped by my recorder shack the next day during lunch. As always, he had Tonochpa with him. Watching him feed her bits of baloney sandwich made me remember the shinny-through-the-pipe game he played with her at the tower site. Something tickled my mind. Hadn't a concrete engineer said he'd laid a pipe through which coolant had been pumped while the concrete around it was curing? Now the run of pipe lay empty and could serve as a conduit for my instrument cable, if I could feed the cable through. Trouble was that the pipe ran from one end of the dam to the other, but only had a fourteen-inch diameter. A man couldn't get through; but a compact creature like Tonochpa.a I asked Mike if she could do it. I said I'd pay him for her services.

"Sure." He grinned.

"Is she strong enough? We'll run a rope first and tie it to the cable, but a few thousand feet of rope is going to be heavy."

"Only way to know is to try," said Mike. He stroked the bobcat, who arched her back against his hand.

"Okay," I said. "How about a week from today? We'll do it when everyone's eating lunch." I didn't mention that having a bunch of my colleagues observing this stunt wouldn't add much to my reputation, especially if the idea didn't work.

Mike became interested in the recorder traces and raised his eyebrows at me knowingly.

"You really think that this is being caused by a magic?" I blurted and added, "Don't get the idea I believe such mumbo jumbo."

He just shrugged his shoulders. "To me, this is magic," he said, indicating the banks of recorders and their wiggling pens. "To you it is the way the world works. Perhaps the same is true of what you call Indian magic. It is all part of the way the world works." He paused. "Are you worried about the dam?"

"h.e.l.l, yes! Aren't you? You've put sweat into it."

"And I have gotten out of it what I want," he said. "A living. And that will end when they no longer need us high-scalers on the tower sites."

I stared at him; unsure of what he meant. I'd seen how hard he worked and the pride he took in his job. I thought he was like the rest of us, eager to see the dam completed and the river harnessed for power and agriculture. But I could see that my a.s.sumption was completely wrong. It occurred to me that Black Canyon might not be a boon to the Indians, but instead a means by which more of their land might be wrenched from them.

"If that's how you feel, why are you worried that the dam might collapse?" I challenged.

"I have an uncle who has settled with his relatives in the Imperial Valley," he said quietly. "You know how much water will be backed up behind this dam."

I knew and I could well imagine how a dam break could send a wall of water rushing down into the agricultural areas below Black Canyon.

"Why don't you just warn him?" I asked, trying not to sound resentful.

"He has worked hard to get the farm and resettle his family. Also, he does not judge me old enough to give him advice," Mike answered.

I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck. I should have known that the only thing that would motivate an Indian would be concern for his relatives. To me, relatives were nothing but a pain in the tailfeathers. Well, at least Mike and I had the same goal in mind, even if our reasons were different. At least he would let me use Tonochpa to get my cable placed.

I continued logging my observations daily, hoping that the record I made would not have to be used in an investigation should Black Canyon Dam collapse during filling. The changes remained small in magnitude, and although more deviations appeared, none grew to alarming proportions. Perhaps the stress and strain numbers were not what they'd been calculated to be. Perhaps my previous experience on other projects was misleading me on this one.

Yet I couldn't help the feeling that the dam itself was trying to send me messages through the wiring of my equipment, trying to tell me that something was going quietly wrong inside the rising ma.s.s of steel and concrete.

Government inspectors came and went, praising the speed of construction. They said that my discoveries were nothing to worry about. At close to eight hundred feet, Black Canyon was the tallest gravity-arch dam yet built and it should not be expected to conform to rules built up by experiences with lesser structures.

If men who were supposed to know said the dam was safe, then who was I to argue? I decided to pay attention to petty things I was sure I could handle, such as laying the instrument cable through the coolant pipe.

The day came and Mike showed up with Tonochpa at my recorder shack, as promised. He seemed ill at ease and told me he felt other Indian workers were watching him. And as we made our way up, I swear we got several dirty looks from hard-hatted Navajos. One moved to follow us.

"What the h.e.l.l's he worried about," I hissed to Mike. "We're only placing a d.a.m.ned cable, for Pete's sake."

Mike, however, didn't answer. I heard him chanting something under his breath. I was wondering whether all the Indians on the site were going slightly loco, this one included. Perhaps this wasn't the best time after all.

As if Mike read my hesitation, he took my sleeve and drew me after him. I shrugged and went. We ducked into a maze of two-by-fours and plywood making up the forms for the next cement pours. He led me over, around and through the framings in a wily trail intended to throw off the Navajo. At last we came to a frame b.u.t.ting up against a finished pour. The end of the coolant pipe stuck out of the concrete block at a distance two feet above the floor we stood on. I spied a panel of plywood on the ground, picked it up and propped it into place to close the way we had come.

We crouched there in the rough chamber made by the plywood sides of the concrete forms; Mike, Tonochpa, and I. Behind us was the roll of cable on its unreeling frame, one end tied to a coil of rope. Mike brought out something else from his knapsack, a leather pouch decorated with symbols. He made a motion as if to attach this to Tonochpa, then hesitated.

"Sacred blue cornmeal in this bag. It will disturb the net of witchcraft woven through this dam. If I put this talisman on her, the sorcerers will know," he muttered, "but she must have protection." He turned to me, looking worried, then his brow cleared. "Bind the rope to her harness. Quickly." A few knots and I made the end fast while he held Tonochpa.

A sudden tapping rattled the plywood sheet beside the one I had propped hastily between two posts to block anyone from interfering once we had started.

"The witches know what I am doing," Mike whispered. With deft fingers, he bound the medicine pouch of cornmeal around the bobcat's neck on the opposite side from where we tied the rope. He placed her at the opening to the coolant pipe, where it emerged from the cement face. Then, to my surprise, he made a tiny tear in the bag with his knife. To my eyes the hole appeared useless, for it would only allow an insignificant dribble and would probably clog up. Mike only smiled and shook his head.

"The hole is large enough for the guarding power of the cornmeal to pa.s.s through," he said.

The bobcat nosed the pipe's end, tested it with her whiskers. To me, the diameter looked too small. Had we miscalculated? Tonochpa seemed ready to agree with me, for she drew back her whiskers as if to retreat. Something made her halt. She eyed the dark interior of the pipe, then thrust her muzzle inside. One front paw slid in, then another. She shinnied her way into the coolant pipe, pulling the rope behind her. I could barely contain a cheer.

"No time for that," said Mike harshly as someone struck the plywood again. "The witches are moving against us."

"I only hope that isn't the gang foreman on the other side wanting to know what in h.e.l.l we're doing," I said, and added, "Or my boss." I grabbed the slithering rope and helped to feed it into the tunnel. The Hopi stooped, laying out a line of powder from another leather pouch. He ran it around me, around the spooling cable, up to the concrete wall and even sprinkled some on top of the coolant pipe.

From the other side of the plywood came a strange chanting song that made me feel as if I had p.r.i.c.kles all over my body. I noticed that it affected Mike even more than I, for he had to fight to keep moving.

He paused, wiping sweat from his brow. "I pray this will be all I have to do, Dale Curtis," he said. I felt baffled. Tonochpa was safely into the pipe now. No one could reach her or drag her out, except by the rope that Mike and I guarded. I continued to feed the rope in response to Tonochpa's steady pull. And then, suddenly, the pull ceased at the same time as the chanting from the other side became louder.

"d.a.m.n. Either she's stuck, or she got cold feet."

"No." I saw Mike's throat move as he swallowed, caught the sheen of sweat on his wide face. "She has been stopped. I feel what is happening." He s.n.a.t.c.hed up his knapsack and began pulling things out. A kilt of white leather. Body paints. Spruce branches.

"White medicine man, you must help me now," he said and surprised the h.e.l.l out of me by wiggling out of his overalls. He whipped off his shirt, then bound the white kilt around his waist. With quick strokes, he fingerpainted his arms and legs. He lifted his chin, pressed a jar of black paint into my hand. "Make the nakwatch symbol on my neck, in the same place as Tonochpa has it."

"Now wait just one minute," I protested. "I've gone along with you this far because I want my cable placed in the dam. You start this mumbo jumbo and I'm out."

Mike whirled to me, but his face was calm. "You may lie to yourself, but you do not lie to me. Your magic tells you that the dam is threatened. You believe your magic."

He had me there. I'd been watching those jiggling recorder traces with my heart in my mouth, hoping one of them would cross a limit so I could justify recommending an evacuation. I could just see the dam crumbling with the men still crawling on it, releasing the water that had already begun to back up behind the lower section. He might have a hair of a chance of being right a He touched the spot under his jaw. I painted. I put streaks on his face and spots on his body to make him resemble a desert wildcat, then drew back as he began to chant and stamp.

The rope jerked, began to move again. Mike danced harder, chanted louder. Again it stopped. I wondered what in h.e.l.l was happening to Tonochpa. If she got stuck, she'd die in there. There'd be no way to get her out.

Mike had been dancing with his eyes half-closed, his face lifted dreamily toward the sky. His head snapped down, his eyes opened as if someone had slapped him. Still stamping in rhythm, he beckoned to me.

"Take your shirt off," he panted. He took the paints I was still holding while I peeled out of my shirt and undershirt. Even as I was still wrestling my arms out of the sleeves, he began painting my chest in brown and white, adding spots. Then he did my face, adding the nakwatch sign in the same place under my chin. I must have looked a sight, capering about bare from the waist up with a paint-streaked face capped with a hard hat.

"Dance," the Indian commanded, and I did my best to imitate his powerful stamp-shuffle. Suddenly I found myself face to face with him. Without hesitation, he reached out and placed two fingers firmly on my neck where the nakwatch sign was drawn. It happened to coincide with my carotid pulse. He pressed so hard it hurt and I began to feel dizzy, with white flashes starting before my eyes.

He told me to press his mark in the same manner and so we stood, arms crossing, fingers pressing each other's throats. I looked into his eyes and saw that the pupils were reshaping themselves into vertical slits. I felt dizzy, light-headed, as if I were losing control of my body. My legs buckled. I sagged. I felt him go dawn with me, gradually sinking.

It was not earth I came to rest on but a viscous black nothingness that gave beneath me and surrounded me. Mike was there, too, for my fingers remained on his neck as if glued there and I felt the ever increasing heat of his pulse along with mine. The beats changed in cadence and character as they blended together. Now it was the pace of a heart much faster and wilder than a man's, a thrumming that seemed to echo off curved walls of steel that imprisoned the creature Mike and I had become.

Yet Mike and I no longer existed as separate beings. We had fused to become the bobcata"I was the bobcat. I never questioned that I had ever been anything else. I felt my whisker ends brush the walls of the pipe, felt ice-cold steel beneath my pads as I inched my way along in darkness. I strained my muscles against the drag of the rope tied to my harness. And then I stopped.

Now I could hear the rustling and squealing and the patter of feet transmitted to me by the faintly ringing metal walls of the tunnel. The musky smell grew in my nostrils, first making me lick my chops, then making me shiver as it became strong, then overwhelming.

A wave of rats and mice poured down the pipe, running between my paws, along my sides, even over my head. My hunger for prey possessed me. I caught a rat in my jaws and shook it, then remembered. I had been sent on this journey by one who trusted me. I could not take time now to kill.

More rodents spilled down the pipe until I could hardly avoid treading on them. As if they resented my ignoring them, the mice and rats nipped and bit. I swatted them aside, dug away mounds of gray-furred bodies that threatened to block the way, scratched, scrabbled and b.u.t.ted my way through, dragging the weight my companion had fastened on me.

Several long-tailed stragglers scurried beneath my paws and then suddenly, I was free of the pests. I crawled on.

I felt the curved wall b.u.mp my back and wondered if the tunnel had become smaller. My paws seemed to slip and slither in the narrowing gutter in which I walked. There came a strange wrenching sound and the pipe itself gave a spasmodic jerk, as if someone had twisted its two ends in opposite directions. I heard the deformed metal groan aloud. I fought to drag forward one forepaw after another, feeling the tunnel grow tight about my shoulders. At last I could only let my forepaws slide before me as I pushed myself onward with my rear paws and still the tunnel constricted as if I were in. the coils of some great snake.

And at last, I could only lie at full length, the shivering metal binding me tightly. My heart fluttered and I felt the chilling weakness of fear. Why had my companion sent me here to die of terror fighting a thing I knew nothing about? Then a voice seemed to speak within my head. The pipe was made of metal, the voice said. Alloy steel has a strong bending resistance. It would never twist like a wrung-out towel no matter how much force was applied to the ends. That was impossible, therefore it wasn't happening. I did not need to understand the details, only to believe I was no longer trapped. And I heard the voice of the one who sent me into this darkness telling me to believe that the pipe could not hold me.

I buried my nose in my forelegs. Some part of me knew those words were true, but the animal part of me was afraid. I could only try to convince myself that the way would open again and I could resume my journey. I thought of my companion and the other voice that spoke with him. That voice knew. That voice understood. And so I believed in what it said, though I understood little.

The walls withdrew from around me. I stood up, shook myself and went on.

I felt as though I had crawled forever in a world of darkness and inward-curving walls when I heard something that made me freeze in mid-step. It was a whispering sound with a hard edge that reverberated within the pipe. I listened again, swiveling my ears backward, feeling the sound vibrate the hairs of my ear tufts. It came from behind me, a sibilant buzz I knew well. I had heard it once when I startled a big diamondback sunning on a rock. Now the musty snake-smell drifted to my nostrils and sweat from my paw pads slicked the pipe's interior.

The rattler was behind me; I quickened my pace to gain distance. A dry sound, half crackle, half buzz, sounded again close to my tail. I scrambled and wiggled down the pipe in a frantic attempt to get away from the snake. And then I felt a change in the thick line that was fastened to my harness. Its surface seemed to change as it moved against my flank, becoming rough, like bark and then scaly.

No longer were its motions the results of my pulling. The thing seemed to writhe with its own life. Had I been able to turn my head in the pipe, I would have bitten away the lashings that bound it to me. But I had no room, so I could only scuttle as fast as I could lay down my paws.

The lashings and my harness changed and thickened. Through my fur I could feel scales emerging on the straps that rubbed against my body. I screamed in dread as they began to crawl, shifting and coiling about me as I ran. I felt the snake's chin glide through the fur on my side, then up over my back. I threw myself about in a frenzy, trying to smash the rattler's head against the walls of the pipe.

The snake came on, undulating over my shoulders and down around my neck, the smell and feel of it driving me into maddened thrashing. I ripped scales off with my claws, tried to sink my teeth into the thing, but it only kept coming. A faint part of my mind wondered why it hadn't struck me with its fangs.

And then I knew. I felt the snake's wedge-shaped head probing in my fur beneath my jaw, searching for the thong that tied the pouch of blue cornmeal around my neck. It slipped beneath the thong and twisted to break it. The pouch fell away and the snake with it.

When the rattler's coils loosed, I gathered myself for a leap that would shoot me down the pipe. I could see a slight circle of daylight in the distance. My journey was nearly over. But I knew, with a certainty that was not mine, that if I abandoned the pouch of cornmeal, I would leave my task unfinished.

I was shuddering so hard I could barely keep my footing. A part of me screamed in consuming panic, begging me to run toward the light. But I remembered the one who had sent me and knew I could not fail him.

Instead of springing ahead, I backed up until I felt the rattler's coils against my hind legs. Scrabbling about with all four paws, I snagged something leathery, wrenched it away from the snake.

A blow knocked me against the sides of the pipe and two fierce stabs of fire penetrated my flank. The rattler had struck. The poison burned outward from my hip, swelling and stiffening my hind leg. I grabbed the neck of the cornmeal pouch and fought my way toward the light, which wavered now before my eyes as my body became heavier and heavier. The snake kept its grip, pumping venom into me as I dragged it along. But I thought only of moving my three leaden feet and dragging the useless fourth as I kept my jaws clenched about the neck of the medicine pouch.

And then, as I struggled toward it, the light seemed to flare, then dim. My yowl of dismay echoed down the pipe, but just as suddenly, the surface dropped from beneath my feet and I tumbled, still entangled in the snake's coils, its poison in my blood and nothing but black emptiness around mea.

I came to with a sudden start. The band of the hard hat still encircling my head felt so strange I wanted to claw it off. What were the wrappings about my waist and legs?

I felt a hand shaking me. My head wobbled. "Dale!" Mike's voice hissed in my ear. "She's through! Hurry."

Still discarding shreds of bobcat thoughts, I staggered to my feet. Mike had thrown aside the plywood and gone sprinting along the wooden catwalk that led to the other end of the dam. I pelted after him, wiping the black paint from my face as I ran. I didn't even try to make sense of what was happening, I just followed the Indian in his flapping white kilt.

I saw him leap down into a nest of plywood forms and steel bars that awaited the next pour. That's where the coolant pipe emerged. When my boots. .h.i.t the concrete near where Mike had dropped, I saw him stooping over the body of the bobcat. She had used her remaining strength to drag herself out of the pipe. I could see the trail of blue cornmeal grains running from the pouch around her neck back into the pipe and disappearing down its' depths.

At first I thought Tonochpa was dead, then I saw her rib cage tremble. With a curse, Mike wrenched something from her flank. It was the desiccated corpse of a huge Western diamondback, the fangs in its flattened head tipped with bobcat blood.

"Burn it," he said fiercely, as he gathered up Tonochpa and threw down the dried snakeskin. I bent, played the flame of my battered lighter under the long-dead rattlesnake. It startled me by catching fire like a piece of resin timber and crumbling into embers.

Mike put the limp cat in his lap, He ma.s.saged her rib cage with his thumbs, his face tight with worry. "Little one," he moaned, "the snake was never alive, no poison runs in your blood." I stood beside him, not knowing what to do. I'd heard that some wild creatures were so highly strung that they could die of shocka Then he did something I didn't expect. Quickly he laid a piece of.his woven kilt-sash across her face, covered her muzzle with his lips and blew short shallow breaths through her nose and mouth. He did several cycles, each time pausing to pump her rib cage with his fingers and listening for signs that she would breathe on her own. The last time, I thought the moisture in his eyes would spill over into tears, but the wildcat gave a sudden jerk away from the cloth, opened her mouth in a huge gape, and inhaled.

She kept breathing. Her ears twitched, then her eyes opened, fixing me with a baleful glare as if she knew my part in setting up this crazy adventure. At Mike's request, I retrieved both our clothes and his knapsack. He wrapped Tonochpa in my shirt and fed her something medicinal from a clay jar in his pack. Gently he untied the rope from her harness, handing the end to me. I touched the rope hesitantly, fearing it might sprout scales and writhe in my hand, but it only hung stiffly. A bundle of twisted fiber tied to a cable I could now winch through the dama"that's all it was. And I was an engineer again, someone whose realities consisted of hardware, measurements, and records.

For an instant I wondered if the entire experience had just been some kind of hallucination. I certainly couldn't deny the presence of the rope in the conduit or the trait of blue cornmeal running out of the pipe's end. Tonochpa had completed my task. I wondered what else she had done. Mike stood, cradling the recovering bobcat in his arms, his eyes fixed on the line of cornmeal.

Then he turned to me. "Black Canyon Dam is safe. My partner did her work well." His smile turned ironic. "Perhaps too well."

I scratched my head under the hard hat meaning to ask him what the h.e.l.l he meant by that, but he got in ahead of me. "Let's see if your white-man's magic agrees with mine," he said, holding Tonochpa in the crook of his elbow as he climbed out of the plywood bracings of the form. I followed, eager to see what my recorder tracings revealed.