Best Friends (4 page)

T
heir battle plan was simple.

Michael, Francis, Steven, Cyrus, Gregory, Paul, and Virgil—the “upper body brigade” as Francis nicknamed them—would go ahead to Kanab Canyon and start building. The Arizona ranch would be put up for sale with Faith and Diana Asher staying behind to take care of the animals until a buyer came along. As the sanctuary came together, the rest of the group would phase into the operation as needed.

The men argued that the two women should come with them, but Faith would have none of it. “Get real, guys,” she said firmly. “You don't even have a dog run. I'm not chancing our animals being coyote fodder. You get some simple accommodations on that land and we'll be there.”

Yet seventeen long months would pass before all the “upper body brigade” could wind up their respective business affairs and leave for Utah. Then again, everyone had hoped the Arizona ranch would sell quickly, but with no offers forthcoming it was deemed prudent to bank enough seed money to take them through at least a couple of years.

Finally, on a cold February 1, 1984, a little after midnight, Francis Battista's old blue ranch truck, pulling an ancient trailer and followed by Paul Eckhoff and Virgil Barstad's equally aged green and yellow trucks filled with seven eager men, left Prescott, Arizona for good to begin the journey to the canyon.

The drive to Utah was uneventful except for Michael's threats to wring Francis's neck every time he took a rut in the road at seventy miles an hour, sending Michael bouncing into the ceiling like a pogo stick.

Steven Hirano, squashed between the two of them on the front seat, just shook his head. He was used to the banter between his so different friends: Michael, built like a beanpole, with an angular, aristocratic face that seemed to betray his Oxford education even before he opened his mouth; Francis, a few inches shorter, quick to thought and action—a true product of his Italian genes and New York upbringing. The funny thing was, they complemented each other perfectly.

The brigade arrived in Kanab as a pale dawn sun struggled through a sky threatening snow. Not a soul was about as the convoy rumbled down Main Street. Substantial red brick storefronts, reminiscent of a bygone era, shone dim yellow lights onto empty pavement. It was as if the whole town had decided to stay in bed this chilly morning.

Still, nothing could dampen the men's enthusiasm as they rattled over the rough road of Kanab Canyon, past Norm Cram's house and cabins, past the dormant meadows, winding ever higher toward the flat-topped mesas.

A winter's landscape of austere beauty awaited them at the crest of the butte. The valley below curved and bowed between sandstone cliffs that gleamed like white cathedrals under a hard night's frost, not yet melted. Willows and cottonwoods, long stripped of their greenery, were dark sentinels along a meandering twist of creek.

All around them, the highland stretched to infinity, thick with sage and juniper. Francis bumped his truck off the road and followed a deer path into a clearing before killing the engine. For a few minutes everything was quiet. Then the silence was shattered by the stomp of seven pairs of boots crunching onto rock-hard ground as seven cramped bodies hit the earth.

Everyone was smiling, all tiredness forgotten.

Cyrus Mejia was not to be contained. He threw back his head and flung his arms wide like Zorba the Greek. “Yes, yes, yes!” he whooped. “We're here, we're here!” He stopped. “This is too stunning. Where's my pad? I've got to sketch this right now.”

“It's not going anywhere,” Michael assured him.

“All right, everybody. How about we eat, then explore some?” Francis suggested.

Paul led the way. He had made several trips to the canyon in the past twenty months, figuring where they might build, where the power and electric lines might go. Now he pointed out the advantages of different sites, showing his friends the possibilities.

The men hiked until exhaustion overcame the ebullience that had kept them going. Still, they were too wound up to nap. Someone had thought to pack some beach chairs. They unfolded them against the side of Virgil's truck and sat, knees scrunched up against the cold, tired beyond words.

The distant clank of an engine in need of an oil change was like a slap in the face of the afternoon's tranquility. “We expecting anyone?” Cyrus asked.

“Nobody knows we're here,” Michael said.

A truck to rival any of theirs in age and wear rumbled over a rutted track across the mesa. The vehicle jerked to a stop in front of them and a wrinkled elf of a man jumped down. In his right hand he gripped a shovel almost as big as himself.

“Afternoon, Francis. Taking it easy I see,” he said with obvious disapproval.

Francis pushed to his feet. “Even God took a break. How you doing, Kelvert? Guys, this is Kelvert Button. He's the man for all our water questions.”

Kelvert's woolen-capped head bobbed in greeting as each of the men felt obliged to stand.

“Kelvert, this is Michael Mountain. . . .”

Kelvert thrust out a sandpaper-skinned hand. “You were here last year.”

“That's right.”

“Cyrus Mejia,” Francis continued.

“Mejia,” Kelvert turned the name over. “That be Mexican?”

“Colombian,” Cyrus grinned.

“Never been to Colombia,” Kelvert pronounced.

“Paul Eckhoff and Gregory Castle. They're Brits. Virgil Barstad, Steven Hirano and myself are the Yankee contingent,” Francis finished.

Kelvert gave a satisfied nod. “Regular United Nations, eh?”

Francis smiled. “So, Kelvert, how'd you know we arrived?”

“Norm Cram saw you come in.”

“Good watchdog,” Michael observed.

“Norm likes to keep an eye on things.”

Steven was staring at Kelvert's truck. “I don't mean to be rude,” he said, “but is that a goat in the front seat?”

A wide grin split Kelvert's flinty features. “That's my girl. Goes everywhere with me.” He slapped his thigh as if calling a dog. A Nubian goat immediately jumped delicately to the ground and trotted over to her master.

It was the prettiest goat Michael had ever seen. The glossy gray fur on its body shone from daily brushing. Long basset-like ears framed sweet almond eyes that surveyed the group with the guileless quality of a Bambi. Soft, velvety down covered a nose that twitched with curiosity in their direction.

Michael had a compelling urge to touch the beautiful creature. He strolled over and squatted beside the nanny. “May I?” he asked, hand extended to pet the goat's head.

“I'd be a bit careful; she hasn't had her supper yet,” Kelvert warned.

Michael jerked back his arm. Too late. The goat lifted her upper lip and a set of healthy incisors chomped down hard on the red-and-white plaid of her admirer's sleeve.

“Girl, you know you shouldn't do that,” Kelvert scolded. The nanny continued chewing, and Michael could swear she was smiling. “Ah well,” Kelvert sighed. He fished a carrot from the depths of his overalls and gently tapped his pet on the nose. The goat immediately transferred her affections to the more edible treat.

“Thank you,” Michael said gravely, glaring at his friends, who were having a hard time keeping straight faces.

Kelvert composed his features and shifted his shovel over to his left hand. “I came to see what you're up to,” he said.

“Deciding where we're going to build,” Francis answered.

“You should plan where there's lots of water—in one of the meadows, like Norm Cram.”

“We'd rather stay higher up; we love the view,” Michael said.

“And we don't want to spoil the beauty of the canyon with a lot of buildings and dog runs,” Cyrus explained.

Kelvert's weathered face puckered into a frown. He shifted his shovel back to his right hand. “Lots of buildings? Dog runs? What you planning to be doing here?”

“An animal sanctuary.”

Kelvert ruminated on that one. “Animal sanctuary? That's not what I heard.” A sly grin cratered the little man's features. “Rumors are Clint Eastwood's coming back. Gonna build some kind of fancy retreat here.”

Francis shook his head. “Kelvert, Kelvert. We're not fronting for Clint Eastwood, or any other Hollywood folks.” Kelvert looked decidedly unhappy.

Michael nudged their spokesperson. “Maybe that's one rumor we should help along,” he murmured.

“What'd you say?” Kelvert demanded.

“Nothing,” Michael replied, all innocence.

“There's just going to be eighteen ordinary people here,” Francis insisted, frowning at Michael.

“Ladies joining you, I hope?”

“Of course, and we'll need places for people to stay, and shelter for the dogs, cats, horses, maybe even a goat or two.”

Kelvert had visibly perked up at the assurance of ladies. “Still think you should build below. The wind howls like a banshee up here, and the sun'll give you no mercy come July.”

Since Michael had spent time exploring the canyon the summer before and found the weather to be perfectly agreeable, he suspected that Kelvert Button had a propensity to exaggerate—especially to people he imagined might not know any better. “We'd rather stay up here.”

Kelvert leaned on his shovel. He looked from his goat to Michael, as if confirming their similarities. “Well, mad dogs and Englishmen,” he said finally. “Think I'd better give Francis here a hand, then. Looks like he's going to need it. Follow me.” Kelvert picked up his shovel and stomped away.

For an old man, Kelvert was all wire and energy. With his nanny goat gamboling ahead, he marched the men like a drill sergeant until they reached a sloping plateau. Here he stopped, crossed his arms over his concave chest, and smiled with righteous satisfaction as they exclaimed over the spectacular view.

Kelvert let them enjoy the sight for a few minutes before his next pronouncement. “Now about water,” he began. The men gathered closer, an expectant congregation waiting for the words of wisdom from their preacher man. “I know you'll be thinking you see it all over the place trickling down these cliffs, and you can sink a well anywhere, but up on these mesas it be different. Before you drill you gotta find a good, deep seam—and that ain't as easy as you might figure.”

The water expert held forth to his captive audience. “You be needing a dowser, and when you're ready I have just the man. Cox can find water in a horse's ass. Let me tell you about the time. . . .” Kelvert rattled happily on about the exploits of Cox, the best dowser in the state. His nanny, meanwhile, no doubt hungry for her supper, butted her master a couple of times in the rear.

After repeated hints, Kelvert fondly scratched the back of the goat's neck. “My girl here says we gotta go,” he announced. Without another word, the little man swung around and tromped back the way they had come. The newcomers fell in line and dragged wearily behind.

But Kelvert Button wasn't finished with his day's advice. He paused as they reached his truck. “You'd best tell me when you're ready to build, too. I'll steer you right on who to hire.”

Paul Eckhoff spoke quickly. “We all really appreciate your suggestions, but we plan on doing most of the building ourselves.”

Kelvert smothered a laugh. “Please yourself.” He opened the passenger door and his goat jumped inside. “Let's go, girl,” he said, still laughing. “These folks got a lot to do.”

“Was that the official welcoming committee?” Michael asked as the vehicle jolted out of sight.

“Kelvert's good people,” Francis said. “Just curious. Kanab was known as the most isolated town in America before they pushed the highway through in nineteen sixty. I mean, how would you feel about a mess of people descending on
your
territory?”

“I think we're going to get along just fine,” Cyrus declared.

“Maybe I should call Clint Eastwood and invite him to visit. Then we'd be in like Flynn!” Michael deadpanned.

“Okay you guys, knock it off,” Francis said. “Let's make something to eat and turn in early. Tomorrow's another day.”

They fell asleep to the music of coyotes howling in the night.

D
aybreak greeted them with a thin frosting of snow. The men layered on sweaters and jackets against the cold, then took their steaming bowls of oatmeal outside. The winter foliage of a giant sage bush caught Steven's attention. He rubbed a silvered leaf between thumb and forefinger, cupped the crumbled fragments in his hand, and inhaled deeply.

“Smell,” he said, sharing the burst of fragrance with the others. “Isn't it wonderful?”

Francis was scanning the distance to the plateau Kelvert had shown them the day before. The land on this mesa rolled and undulated in mounds and hollows to the cliff's edge, every yard as far as they could see thickly carpeted with scrub, piñon, and juniper. “We need to clear a road,” he stated.

“I've been thinking about that,” Gregory Castle said. He spoke softly, as befitted the quietest member of the group. Gentle of demeanor, Gregory was their English philosopher, a calm pillar of strength in the often rambunctious world of his colleagues.

“It might work just to run the trucks back and forth to the site a few times. The tires can lay down tracks, flatten the smaller plants, and we can cut out the bigger obstructions.”

“Let's get to it,” Francis said.

They macheted brush all day. By noon they'd worked up enough of a sweat to take off their shirts, exulting in the bite of chilled air against their skin. They didn't stop until it was too dark to see.

They slept in town that night. Before leaving Arizona they'd rented, sight unseen, the cheapest house they could find in Kanab. As Steven had sagely pointed out, “Seven guys in one trailer can get a little too close for comfort.”

Cyrus cooked, finding the energy from somewhere to whip up a tofu quiche and green salad while his companions struggled to keep their eyes open. The crew was asleep by eight o'clock.

 

It was a routine that became habit as the months passed: awake at sunup; bang nails until dark; then back to the house with the leaking roof, or to one of the three local restaurants if Steven or Cyrus, the designated chefs, were too beat to cook.

The men grew to cherish the simplicity of laboring with their hands and the satisfaction of exhaustion at day's end. They found that, in spite of their inexperience, they could do this work.

Sometimes their lack of knowledge was even in their favor, as when they desperately needed power and a phone. Frozen ground made the hand-digging of trenches for cables an impossibility. Gregory came up with a simple but perfectly adequate solution: “We'll just drape the lines on top of the ground until it gets warmer.”

Their faces became familiar at the hardware store. The bakery knew of Virgil's love of pastries, and their vegetarian preferences were discussed at great length at the grocery.

They were regulars at Nedra's, Chef's Palace, and the local Italian restaurant run by a former boxer from New Jersey—until one night there was a “CLOSED” sign on the door.

The guys thought they were making some small progress in being accepted when it was revealed to them in Duke's Sporting Goods that the former boxer had left his wife that morning to run off with a very young girl from the nearby polygamous community of Colorado City.

But they couldn't seem to make much headway with their only neighbor at the mouth of the canyon. They would wave or shout “hello” when they spied him, but Norm Cram would either watch them go by or turn around and stomp back into his house.

Grant Robinson was another matter. Cyrus was puzzled by the buzz of a chainsaw one afternoon and went to investigate. About a mile away he found an old man, easily in his late eighties and bent like a gnome with arthritis, cutting limbs off a tree.

“Me and my Effie homesteaded this place,” he said. “I sold it fifteen years ago, but . . .” He winced and carefully shifted his saw from a clawlike hand to his equally disfigured other. “Can't seem to leave the place alone.”

The old man nodded to the sapling, stripped of limbs and growing straight as a plumber's line to the sky. “You might find a use for these one day. They make the best barn posts.”

“Feel free to come any time,” Cyrus said and was pleased to see the old man's eyes light up with pleasure.

Grant Robinson took Cyrus at his word. The guys came to look forward to his appearances. They ate up his stories of the old days of pioneers and sheepherders and how the canyon was scoured by a hundred-year flood, and they listened to his wisdom on the land. It was Grant who warned them never to go anywhere without a shovel and jack. “Some places this soil gets like quicksand, and your truck will sink in up to its axle.”

“So you dig it out?” Michael sounded doubtful.

Grant chuckled. “First you let the air out of the tires. Then it's easy.”

“Now I understand Kelvert and his shovel!” Paul exclaimed.

After their initial push, the men allowed themselves a respite on Sunday afternoons to explore their land or just do nothing. Still, they were consumed with the urgency of finishing at least one livable building and some shelter for the dogs—they sorely missed having their animals underfoot. There was no pressure from their friends, but they were all too aware that Faith and her team were holding down the Arizona ranch while others worked in the cities to contribute their share of expenses.

So it was a happy crew who, in the first days of July, passed the word that 1,800 square feet of bunkhouse stood rough but ready for visitors.

 

Faith was the first to call. “Michael, I can't wait. It's so exciting. Is it hot? I'm bringing dogs, and Diana's following right behind with some of the cats. We've got Jasper, Brooke, Monica . . .” Faith rattled off the names of each of their pets.

“Everything's under control. We even picked up another trailer through the
Thrifty Nickel
for the feline leukemia cats.”

“Thrifty Nickel?”

Michael laughed. “It's a free sheet. You know, a paper where it costs people nothing to advertise stuff they want to sell.”

“Michael, that sounds great. We've got more and more animals coming in. I'd like to bring some of the unadoptables if possible.”

“We can handle that, Faith. When are you coming?”

“Diana and I plan on being there late Saturday afternoon.”

“We'll be waiting.”

Francis's Afghan, Jasper, was the first to hurl his golden body out of Faith's old Ford Econoline when she arrived. “Oh baby, I've missed you so, so much,” Francis said, happily accepting slobbering kisses. The Afghan couldn't make up its mind whether to bark with joy or rush around and bestow an equally crazed greeting on his other persons.

The rest of the “upper body brigade” were engaged in mutual love-ins with their own dogs. Seventeen canines jumped, squealed, and licked in joyous reunion with their equally ecstatic owners. The cats were the next to be unashamedly kissed and cuddled.

When men and beasts finally settled down, the women were proudly shown the bare-bones bunkhouse with its concrete floor, unpainted walls, and secondhand furniture. Diana particularly liked the wire enclosures that Francis had built so the cats could go outside and get some fresh air.

“There is one small thing, though,” she said.

The men waited.

“Window ledges. You know what I mean? This place needs some nice, fat window ledges for the cats to lie on and look outside.”

Francis laughed. “And I imagined I'd thought of everything. Consider it done.” Francis loved cats every millimeter as much as Diana.

“I've got something to show you,” Steven said. “Come on.”

Faith and Diana followed him out of the bunkhouse.

Steven led them down the slope to a small clearing protected by a sapling fence. “You know, I've tried never to live anywhere without a garden. What do you think?”

The women were quiet, looking at what Steven had wrought. More than a vegetable plot, he had fashioned a Zen garden that might have been transported from the old country.

A statue of the Buddha blessed a tiny pond surrounded by budding edible flowers. Wind chimes hung from a gnarled juniper that shaded early lettuce and radish. None of them knew it then, but they were looking at the inspiration for a place to which one day thousands would make the pilgrimage to say good-bye to animals they'd come to know and love.

“Where did you get the Buddha?” Faith asked.

“I asked my parents to ship it to me,” Steven said.

“This is what Steven did on his time off on Sunday afternoons,” Michael said as he joined them.

“It's so special,” Diana murmured.

Michael saw that her eyes were creased with fatigue. A hank of long hair had worked loose from its ponytail and stuck damply to the back of her neck. “You look a little wilted.”

“I think my clothes are permanently glued to my body after driving all day. I need a shower, and some food would be nice.”

Michael grinned. “I was just coming to get you.”

 

Cyrus and Steven went all out on the meal that evening. Cyrus complemented his famous tofu pot pie with a simple green salad from Steven's garden, tossed with a special low-fat mayonnaise for Faith. He knew how she loved to smear it over everything, especially her beloved banana sandwiches. His fellow cook contributed tempura vegetables and apologized for the store-bought peach pie. All was satisfyingly washed down with the State of Utah government liquor store's best red.

It was in this sated after-dinner contentment, with dogs lolling at their feet and cats on their laps, that Kanab Canyon lost its name.

“Kanab Canyon?” Michael sniffed as if he'd just smelled something rotten. “It doesn't say a thing about what we're trying to do here.”

The others nodded agreement.

A cooling breeze wafted the cinnamon scent of nightflowers through the screened front door. Fireflies danced in the darkness outside. The guardian presence of a hooting owl was the only sound in the night.

“Angel Canyon,” Cyrus said. “It should be Angel Canyon,” he repeated, not knowing where the name came from, but knowing it was right.

“Of course,” Steven whispered. “Of course.”