"Grant, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but…"
Grant knew what he was going to say before Howard finished. They couldn't do this to him.
"…but plans have changed. It seems the commissioner doesn't think I've been here long enough to run things with…" He looked around as if he didn't know how to finish."…you know, with everybody out of the country so long."
Grant interrupted. "Are you trying to tell me you're canceling my Kenya trip?" He felt all the muscles in his face tighten.
Howard backed up a step and smiled. "I thought you would be happy to be left in charge."
Grant wondered if he had missed something. How could Grant be in charge, if both he and Howard were in America together? And then it hit him. Anger returned. His brows furrowed and he gritted his teeth, barely able to speak. Bruce had been right. "So you're taking my place?"
Howard shook his head and actually waved his finger back and forth. "No. No, Stevens. You've got it all wrong. I'm not interested in Kenya. Who wants to hang around with a bunch of boring engineers? I'm leaving. I decided to take vacation next week." Howard shrugged. "Then you can manage America's dams without my interference. Besides, ever since I came out west, my wife's been nagging me to take her to Yellowstone, so we decided―"
"How long have you known about this?" The thought of not going on the trip made Grant feel sick. He would kill to be able to discuss the challenges of building the Three Gorges Dam with the Chinese engineers. What about his safari in Tanzania? What would he tell his wife? Grant had spent a fortune on reservations for the week of personal travel. He had thought of nothing else but this trip for months.
Howard read his mind and waved his hands back and forth. "If you're worried about your personal money, don't. The Bureau's gonna pick up the tab. I told Roland about your vacation and he said the Bureau would reimburse you. He's already approved it."
That mitigated some of the anger, but not the emptiness. The disappointment was overwhelming. He needed to sit down. He kicked at a loose rock on the road.
Howard pursed his lips in an expression that actually showed compassion. "Look, I know you don't like this."
He didn't say anything. He knew Howard didn't care.
His boss, who had never even attempted to talk to Grant as a friend, now confided in him like they were pals. "Hey, I'm not happy about this either. They told me that I didn't have enough time at the Bureau to be in charge. They wanted us to switch roles, me report to you for the week. But I told them to stick it, and took some vacation."
Grant couldn't believe what he had just heard. They had actually suggested Howard report to Grant for a few weeks? Maybe Roland did know what he was doing. But even if the Bureau suddenly figured out they needed to leave a real engineer home, why did it have to be Grant? Roland and Grant had never seen eye to eye. Grant felt like Roland was too much of a politician, and Roland always thought Grant was too much of an engineer. Besides, unlike most of the others attending the symposium, Grant actually cared about the speakers, and the panels. He wouldn't be there just to schmooze.
Howard continued. "Anyway, Roland's admin will brief you in the morning about any issues that could come up in the next ten days." Howard's eyes softened until they reminded Grant of a puppy. "And if anything does come up, here's my cell phone number." He handed Grant a card. "You can call me anytime. I'll be in Yellowstone with my family."
Grant nodded. It seemed for a moment as if Howard was begging him to call, like a call might validate him somehow. It didn't matter though, because Grant wouldn't call Howard if his life depended on it.
Grant pocketed the card. They stood and stared at each other for a moment longer, even though the conversation seemed to be over. Howard checked his watch. Grant turned to go.
"Don't hesitate to call," Howard said.
Grant walked away with his fists clenched. He resisted the urge to pick up a rock and throw it. He felt like screaming, but he held his composure. He walked stiffly for a few minutes before a thought struck him. Did Howard say he would be vacationing in Yellowstone? Grant smiled. Hadn't he read about grizzlies being re-introduced into the park? Grant smiled as he pictured Howard focusing his camera while a huge grizzly charged toward him.
The water looked cold and dangerous. Only an idiot would dare swim out beyond the shallows without a life jacket, or some other flotation device. It would be suicide. The strong undertows would grab you, and pull you to the bottom before you knew what was happening. And then? Well, there wouldn't be anything after that because once the river had you, it would never let you go.
The solitary man reached down and touched the river. He rolled the wetness between his fingers to determine the texture. Unable to detect any silt with his fingers, his hand went to his face, and he inhaled, smelling it. Nothing. He dipped his hand again, and this time licked the tips of his fingers, tasting. Ah, now he could just discern the silt in the water, his tongue finding a few small particles and detecting the expected salty flavor.
Still crouching, he looked across the Colorado River to the other side, taking in the size, sensing the power. It was alive. He felt it. The river radiated power, especially the rapids. Unfortunately, even here in the Grand Canyon, the river was shackled, bound like a prisoner, unable to show its full strength. Others didn't notice, but he did. The concrete dams held it back. Sure the river ran a little stronger today than yesterday. But that only meant the flow through the turbines at the Glen Canyon Dam, some hundred and seventy-five miles upstream, had been increased, most likely due to a "hot one" in Phoenix, when the Arizonans cranked up the air conditioners. More electricity from the turbines meant more water downstream. It was as simple as that. The mighty Colorado River was a slave to man, caged and controlled.
He stood and looked up the rock canyon walls rising thousands of feet on both sides of the river. Although he often visited the Grand Canyon, the immensity always inspired him. He tried to imagine the river carving the canyon over millions of years, an image that was impossible to visualize. But he knew it hadn't been this river; it had been a wild untamed river, over eight times larger during spring runoff, much dirtier, and powerful enough to constantly re-arrange the huge boulders.
The best way to describe the man, if anyone cared to, was that he seemed unremarkable in every way. No facial features worth remembering, a plain face with plain brown hair. His clothes showed his familiarity with the desert outdoors, but again they were not fancy and were well worn. The only attribute that anyone would likely remember if they tried to recall the man was his build. He was uncommonly skinny. Skinny enough that almost all would remember it, if questioned. Then there were his eyes. Some might be unsettled by them, and they would be recalled as wild eyes.
If anyone actually knew the man, they would likely describe him as obsessed with the Colorado River. He had studied it for years. He knew its history. Nobody cared more about the river than he did. Although he made a living as a technician in Las Vegas, keeping the casino lights flashing was only a job, secondary to his first love. Weekends and vacations were spent in the desert, the National Parks: Zion, Arches, Bryce, Canyonlands, and the Grand Canyon. Not just on the roads either, but in the backcountry. He knew them all, like a rancher knows his spread.
At that moment the man worried about the Colorado River, about what it had become. Most Grand Canyon tourists thought the river looked impressive, but they had never seen it before the Glen Canyon Dam destroyed it.
Before 1962, travelers described the river as a wild animal with rapids three stories high. The pre-dam Colorado was extremely dirty, carrying millions of tons of silt and mud. When the river receded from high flows, giant sand dunes were left deposited on the banks, creating the perfect environment for wild flowers and swallows that used the mud for their nests. Now, without the spring floods, the sand had eroded away, and the wild flowers and swallows had disappeared. The silt, meanwhile, was trapped behind the dam, slowly filling Glen Canyon.