Chapter 4

I had a feeling Jack Oberon would be at the foot of the mountain early in the morning. I was somewhat tired, for Bob had held a strategy session late into the evening. Then I had to repeat everything to Helen. She had breakfast ready for me at five in the morning. She packed my lunch and filled two thermoses with coffee for me to take with me. "I'll see you before ten this morning. I'm glad I don't have to take the walk you have to make this morning. Will you be off the mountain when I get there?"

"I should be, but wait for me if I'm not. I won't be long." I was right because when I got to the mountain, Jack was waiting on me. It was six forty-five.

"Have you been waiting long?"

"Nope, just got here." I laughed, for I could see two cigarette butts stamped out where he had been standing.

Jack was tall, thin, grey-haired and looked older than the hills. I wondered if he could make it up the mountain to where I thought the well would be drilled. "Wait a bit longer. I've got two laborers coming to brush out the road for me. I need to tell them what to do. They had to draw tools from the shed."

"I walked around looking at the swamp. Boy, you are going to have some pile of mud after cutting a road through the swamp. If you get it into farmland, it is going to be worth more'n a million. Show me what your plans are. I tried to follow you, but lost some of it because I couldn't visualize it."

I walked over to the swamp edge and explained what the state plans were and why we were directed to do it that way. "We may get a few more bucks out of the state. Bob is having his attorneys looking into it. The specs they gave us are all wrong about the depth to bedrock. In some places it may be double, so it is going to take at least a third more fill. Let's walk back and I'll show you generally where I'm putting the road to the well."

The laborers drove in with chainsaws. At least where I wanted the road it wasn't heavily forested. The trail I was building was to begin at the base of the ridge near the mountain. The ridge traveled east and west, parallel to the new road and the corner of the mountain was generally north and south. We were quarrying off the corner of the west mountain.

The promised road was going to cut through the corner. We would cut all the way through the mountain, working across the cut looking into the basin. As we quarried fill, the road would get lower and lower and this would make it less steep down into the basin. Jack thought this was great.

We walked a hundred yards to where I wanted the road up to the well to start. I had a bunch of stakes in my hand. "Hey Tom and Rob, this is Jack. We are going to walk up to where I want to get a well drilling rig placed. Every so often I'll drive in a stake where I want the road to be. I think you can move right along cutting everything in the path. My Cat will be here by the time we come back down.

"There is one place about a third of the way up where I will have to build around an outcropping of ledge, so if you would limb out any trees that are over six inches, I'll use them for cribbing. You men will be with me all week and I hope to have this all done by Saturday."

"Sounds good to me, Rich." I spent another fifteen minutes giving directions. I was concerned that Jack would have a hard time climbing, but I needn't have worried. He even paused to help me decide where exactly the road should go. When we reached the top he was as fresh as I was.

Looking back down at the row of stakes I had placed, I was well satisfied. It wasn't too steep. It was almost straight getting to this point. The well drilling rig would be backing up here, so straight was good.

Jack had a shoulder bag with some instruments that he took out. I showed him where I thought the main vein of water was. He agreed it was close. "That big chunk of ledge is acting like a cap rock. If it were removed, probably water would burst up out of the ground, but there would be no real way to contain it. As you figured, the best way to get the water is to drill in from the side and put the pipe into the column. How far down did you plan to drill?"

"I was thinking at least twenty feet."

"I think twenty-five would be better. That would make us more certain to be below any cracks that come out to feed the swamp."

I was interested how Jack planned to determine where to drill. I hadn't noticed but he had cut a forked switch on the way up. He now took this, one leg in each hand and climbed up onto the cap rock. He wandered around and I watched as it dipped until he released his hands.

"The water vein doesn't go directly straight down under the rock. It slants back into the mountain. I'll follow it." He went about fifteen feet and then turned around. "If the vein curves around, this is the outer edge of the curve. It doesn't seem to vary sideways. That's a plus. We just have to determine the angle it takes so we can meet it twenty-five feet down."

I watched as Jack walked back toward the cap rock, stood still, tightened his hands on the switch, and then released them. He did this every three feet. I was curious so I asked, "What are you doing?"

"Getting the angle of the water channel. I calculate, at fifteen feet from the cap rock the vein is about thirty-two feet below the surface. At twelve feet away it is twenty-five feet. At six feet, or at the edge of the cap rock, it is six feet which is the thickness of the rock. So for now, we should drill down where I said the twenty-five foot mark is. You must realize it isn't really that far, as the land rises steeply. Where it angles down it might only be sixteen feet below the cap rock?"

"And this is for certain?"

"I'm confident it is. Moving water is what attracts the dowsing rod. It has been used for hundreds of years. To ease your mind though, we will get the machine up here that drills dynamite holes and drill almost where I believe the water is. I'll run a sensor in there and it will pinpoint it exactly. The well driller will just go ahead and drill where I tell him to. It will take longer to set up the rig than to drill and install the pipe."

"That's amazing that you can find water like that. How did you discover you could do this?"

"My grandfather taught me. It either works for a person or it doesn't. Do you want to try it?"

"Sure." I jumped up on the cap rock and Jack handed me the stick. Nothing. That was okay. It wasn't a skill, if that was what it was, that I needed.

We went on then, and I showed Jack where I intended to have the pipe cross to the top of the ridge. There wasn't enough soil to bury it, so I intended to build a few cradles for it to rest on. Jack would be working with Ken Sr. to decide where it was to go to the other side and down to where he was putting in his turbine-driven generator.

When we got down off the mountain, Helen was just wheeling in, driving a lowboy with my D4 Cat on it. This was a very old machine, but Bastion kept it repaired and in service. They laughed when I had asked how many times it had been overhauled and rebuilt. Helen jumped down and started releasing the binders that held it on. Jack stood there and watched as I pulled out the ramps and climbed onto the dozer. I fired it up and let it warm. I backed it off and put the ramps back into the lowboy. Helen came and kissed me. "See you this evening, Rich. Have fun."

She backed the lowboy to where it and the tractor could turn around and with a blast of the air horn bounced down the rough unfinished road back to where she had come from. There were portions of a crane arriving. Helen never let up, blowing by it wide open. Jack stood there shaking his head in disbelieve that a woman could handle a tractor loaded with equipment like she did. I was proud.

Jack watched me make my first cut with the Cat into the side of the mountain. There was plenty of material to make a road at this point. It was a lot of stone and dry dirt. This was only a temporary access and was built to be used only once or twice. The well drilling equipment was heavy so I had to build it with care.

I hoped the rig would be in and out of here by next week. After that I could move around on the mountainside with my Cat doing what was necessary. Early winter rains would be here in a few short weeks, so everything concerning the well had to be in place by then or it would be much more difficult. We didn't need a rig of that size rolling down the mountain because it slid on a wet spot.

In the back of my mind I was buying the right to quarry all the stone we needed to install the road base across the swamp. Was that important? Damned straight.

I saw Helen's brother arrive and fire up a big loader. There was another Cat bigger than mine pushing the covering dirt aside to open the quarry. More trucks arrived with the individual parts to assemble the crane. The huge bucket arrived on its own truck. One flatbed held the counter weights that would be installed on the bed of the crane. This would prevent the crane from tipping over as it swung the full bucket to the side.

Bob Bastion had assembled this equipment which had been strung out in different places and when he got Ken Knowles' agreement to quarry stone he started moving it into place. He knew he was going to use it someday, but hadn't imagined it would be this soon.

I knew this was all going on, but I concentrated on what I was doing. I would make a cut and push it to the side. My one fear was that I wouldn't have enough material to make a track wide enough to support the heavy well-drilling truck. I was gaining on the men who were cutting the trees ahead of me. A third of the way up the mountain I came to the place where the face of the mountain was nearly sheer for about twenty feet.

I had planned on building some cribs and filling them with dirt and gravel, but I could see this would take more time than I wanted to spend. I shut the machine down to idle and sat there puzzling what to do. Having an inspiration I called Bob on my radio. "Bob, we have some of those concrete blocks left over that we used to stabilize the first cut we made back at the beginning of our section of the road, don't we?"

"Yeah, we have an assortment. What do you need?"

"I think we have two of those beams ten feet long and various small blocks five feet in length. I need something to get around this rock face. This will be only temporary until the well is in. We can pull them out and reuse them when we need them for something else."

"They are damned heavy. The long beams weigh over four tons apiece. Is the road stable enough to manage the big loader with one of them in the bucket?"

"It had better be. That drilling rig has to go over it. Can you break Troy loose from what he is doing to handle them?"

"I can, but how are we going to get them here?"

"Helen can drive the flatbed. Can you have them loaded onto that?"

"Okay, I hope you know what you are doing." I thought I did. I had been the major operator when constructing the road over the mountains two years ago while in the service. There I had used smaller, more irregular blocks than I had available here. These should fit together with little trouble.

We worked all afternoon and had the first course down by quitting time. I had school tonight and wasn't prepared that well. I would catch up when it let up a little here.

Troy was older and knew his equipment better than I did, but since I clearly knew what I wanted to accomplish, we worked well together. We were back at it by daylight the next morning because Troy had to get back to the job he was doing before Bob had called him off the quarry site to help me. When we finished, we had a stable road around the ledge, twelve feet wide and a solid eight feet high. Troy proved its worth by driving his big loader back and forth over it several times. I was pleased at what we had accomplished to get by this difficult spot.

I stayed late, and before dark I had advanced up the mountain and was nearly to the level area for the drilling rig. I left it for tomorrow. Helen, Brad and Scotty were complaining they never saw me anymore. I promised I wouldn't stay at the job site as long as I had this week from now on.

I went in late in the morning as I did some studying. Tonight I had a class again, the last one this week. I got on site by ten-thirty. By one that afternoon the space was ready to set the drilling rig. It wouldn't be here until Monday so I had three days to get back onto a regular schedule. I might even do something with Helen and the boys.

The next morning I went to the site and watched the crew assemble the crane. I couldn't get to anything else done on the mountain for own project until the well driller arrived. This was at first and then I got to thinking, why didn't I go up to see where we were going to lay the pipe? My Cat was still up there, so I climbed up the road and started my machine. I didn't know yet where exactly the well pipe would be coming from the ground, but I could at least start the cut along the ridge for the penstock.

Penstock ... that is a weird description of something that delivers water, i.e., basically a pipe. It sounds like something to corral cattle or horses. Why didn't people say water pipe? I had run onto the word in high school and looked it up in the dictionary. There was a picture of one located in the state of Vermont. It was eight feet in diameter and delivered water four and half miles from a lake to a power station. A tube was constructed of wooden staves held together by metal bands, much like a barrel was held together.

The penstock in Vermont was constructed in 1922 and was rebuilt in 1985. The power and the source were now owned by a corporation in Canada. I was still curious about it, and someone had written up its history just recently.

We were planning cradles to hold the pipe, so a few feet extra in height didn't matter much. There were some small trees that I hadn't thought to have the laborers cut, but I would uproot those and tip them out of the way. This planned cut into the side of the ridge was to be level and it was nearly straight. I opened up the throttle and moved right along.

I arrived at the spot the pipe should cross over the ridge and I could look down into the basin. I knew Ken and Jack would agree this was the best place. I could see the small power dam down below that would be replaced. Satisfied, I turned my machine around and headed back. It was almost time for dinner at home.

One of the small trees I had uprooted and pushed to the side had slid back into the road root first. I suppose I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have. The top of the tree was stuck up in other trees several feet off the ground. I put my blade down and hooked the root, hardly pausing. The damned thing slid off the corner of the blade and flew back and into the tracks. I didn't stop in time and it went into the cogs of the tracks, binding up the drive wheel.

I came to a shuddering stop. I tried reversing the tractor, but I couldn't go either forward or backwards. The tree, actually more of a sapling, was now terribly bowed with the roots in the tracks and the top bent against another tree. I shut the machine off and jumped down to investigate. Just as I walked around, but before I could lean down to look at the track, the tree snapped. One end hit me in the thigh, lifting me into the air. It swept me over the bank. I crashed down the side of the mountain, and the last I remembered was a tree coming at me.

I came to and knew I was being transported in an ambulance. Helen was with me and holding my hand. I squeezed it and passed out. When I woke up again, I was in the hospital. I was groggy, and started asking questions about how bad I was.

"Honey, the nurses tell me you have a concussion so they will be watching you closely tonight. The boys are worried, but you are going to be fine. I'll go home now and I'll see you in the morning.

She was back the next day. "Rich, you're kind of smashed up, but there is nothing life threatening. You will be in the hospital for a little while. Not long we hope, only a few days. You hit your head pretty hard and have a concussion. You have three broken ribs and another couple ribs are lacerated.

"The worst damage is to your thigh. It is terribly bruised and the muscles are damaged. It is going to take a lot of therapy to get you back to where you should be. It was lucky you were standing so close to the tree when it broke. If you had been two or three feet away from it, it would have broken your thigh bone and possibly your hip as well."

"Who found me?"

"Jack Oberon heard you working and had climbed the ridge from the basin side and reached you shortly after it happened. He called to the men down below to tell them you had been hurt."

"How long before I can go back to work?"

"It depends. I have been talking to Dad about this. It will be a month or two before you are strong enough to get back on the Cat. He says your talents are being wasted by just running a piece of machinery. Dad wants you to help him in and out of the office. This gives him an excuse to move you up. Steve and Troy won't mind. They don't want the responsibility and Dad really needs someone as the business gets bigger. So husband of mine, I guess you are it."

"What about you? It seems as if I'm jumping ahead of you and your brothers. All I really want is to provide for my family."

"Rich, you have it in you to really help the company grow. We all realize this and it is time you do, too. You can concentrate on finishing your schooling."

"I am honored to think your father thinks so well of me. If he decides the best place for me is helping him in the office, I will, but I hope he doesn't stick me behind a desk all of the time."

"No, that isn't what the job is. He can handle that. He wants you out coordinating all that goes on at the jobsites. You have proved you can help strategically in the field ever since you came forward with your ideas about this job here. He will be in to see you today. Listen to him, please.

"One thing I wish you would do. I wish you would resign from the active reserve. That will keep you home for sure in case Saddam Hussein does attack his neighbors. Kuwait has an alliance with the United States and Bush has to do something about it. I need you, the family needs you and the company certainly needs you."

"I will of course. However, you know I am now in the same position, being in the active reserve, as I was when I joined the service. Connie couldn't understand. I'm signed up, but I'm basically under contract to fulfill my commitment. We'll hope I'm never called back for active duty. However, I will get out as soon as possible."

We sat quietly and only discussed how lucky I was to come out of this injury as well as I did. I couldn't see my injuries, but I certainly knew I had them. The boys came in to see me as soon as school let out. I laughed and joked with them just to let them know I was okay.

Bob Bastion came in. He didn't say too much, just that he wanted to go over some things with me as soon as I was out of the hospital. "Hurry up and get out of here. I need you." That was the best medicine I could have received.

I described to him in detail how the accident happened. His observation, "We'll make it rule that we never do any land clearing without cutting all the trees first. Hear me?"

Sam Kline came the next day to visit. "Hey boy, got yourself smashed up didn't you. I hear you are going to get well and come out of this okay. Good, I'm glad." He hesitated before saying, "Connie is up here with me for a few days." He looked at me to see how I received his statement.

"Sam, that's great. This is the first time she has visited you isn't it?"

"Yeah. Matt and Corrine are with her. They are out in the lobby right now. Matt would like to come in and speak to you. He wants to thank you personally for letting him adopt Corrine. Would you talk to him?"

"I can do that. Have him come in." Sam went out to tell Matt I would see him. I was thinking why were they putting this on me at this time? I wasn't in the best shape to deal with something like this.

Connie was the first one through the door. She was holding twenty-seven-month-old Corrine in her arms. Matt was behind her with Sam bringing up the rear.

"Hello Rich, how are you doing? Dad told us you were injured."

"I'm banged up and hurting some, but I'm going to be fine." I tried at first to keep my eyes from looking at the little girl. Finally I gave her my full attention. She was pretty, but I had seen other little girls as pretty while shopping. I can't say as I felt anything special for this child I had sired. Maybe it was because of all of the pain the child's mother had caused me.

All three of the family Forbes stood there looking at me, not knowing what to say. Hey, they had intruded on me. I was hurting and I was hoping they would leave. I would wait them out. I took the silence until we were all uncomfortable. "You are wondering, I guess, how I could give up Corrine aren't you? It is complicated. I have to tell you that I feel nothing for her now that I have met her. I think she will be beautiful like you, but it really is nothing to me." I stopped myself from saying something bitter.