Mean and Green
The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.
— Edward Abbey
Steinbeck scholar Brian Railsback's first novel centers around a "what-if" scenario about
a modern-day John Muhammad of the woods. This vigilante is a stockbroker out of
control who goes on a killing spree in an attempt to rid a US national park of the tourists
that have overrun it and ruined its pristine state.
Eldred Spell, the stockbroker in question, is a Primal Man of the first order. He has been
effectively animalized by a cold mother and a harsh military school experience (his
treatment at the hands of the school's Major McCrimmon is flogged almost to death, if
you'll pardon the pun). He has made a huge fortune on Wall Street, has a girlfriend who
likes him mostly for his virility ("Spell was a good man, hard, and dependable," she
thinks), and carries a concealed weapon in public ("safety off").
Railsback's point is clear: Although Spell has been living in New York City for years, his
animal nature remains unchanged. At the beginning of the book, Spell escapes from the
World Trade Center bombings of 1993, and rescues a pair of kindergartners who are
hiding from the commotion. How does he know they're there? He can feel them:
"Just as he was going to turn back, he heard a sound, like whimpering, from somewhere
above. Spell could not be sure if the sound was in his head, or up the stairs, but he had
long since learned to heed such things and he started up."
Right after the bombings, this atavistic beast finds out that his younger sister Ellen has
died in an avalanche in the Valley of the unnamed national park, where they used to
spend time as children. He is furious at himself for being so far from the park for so long:
"Sitting on the floor of his silent Manhattan apartment, he regretted every lost summer.
The only true thing he had known was in the Valley … Ellen had been going for the cave
they discovered, their most secret place, a summer sanctuary. He should have been there
with her. When she died, he had not even known she was in the Valley." Spell decides to
leave New York and journey west to the park. One stop in Ohio and an acquisition of one
high-powered rifle later, he's on his way to the Valley with no strong idea of what he
wants to do.
Meanwhile, Eli Ware, a ranger with the Park Service, is living in Spell's beloved Valley
with her kindly poet husband, Karol Ware, and her little girl Sarah. Despite the presence
of her alcoholic, belligerent father, who lives in a cabin across a field, and a boss who
wants her to do search and rescue and police work while she would rather be an
interpreter, Eli lives an idyllic life. That's until Spell shows up and, seeing the Valley
overrun by loud, stinking tourists, starts shooting the dogs they bring with them.
Spell's spree, predictably, extends to humans, and Eli, the reluctant enforcer, is caught up
in searching for him. You can almost hear the narrative train's wheels screeching as it
pulls into the station where Karol is shot and Eli is challenged: Will she rise up and take
Spell's lead, track him down and destroy him (as he somewhat wants to be destroyed)?
Or will she follow her husband's pacifist ways, cut her losses, keep herself safe for
Sarah's sake, and let Spell escape?
Here, then, is the question that Railsback, like one of those campus environmentalists,
begs you to consider. Is the protection of nature worth the forfeit of innocent human
lives? The answer is so obviously "No" that it's quite hard to believe the character of
Spell. Spell seems to have the same deep-rooted feelings towards the Valley that I do
towards the White Mountains of New Hampshire, my own childhood stomping grounds.
He talks about the fate he is trying to help the Valley avoid:
He had hiked Mammoth Mountain right outside of the Park, had seen how
they ripped trees off of it and planed the slopes for easier skiing in winter. Built another
chalet. What they forgot was how the mountain looked without snow: a stripped desert,
something like an artillery testing range. Money eroded the earth faster than any river or
glacier.
Okay, that last part is true (pedantic, but true). The step Railsback fails to take is the one
between Spell's and my protectiveness towards the land and Spell's murderous impulse.
You have to do a lot of work to make me believe that I would ever consider shooting
Karol to save the Whites – or that Spell, the Spell who saved those kindergartners, would
either.
If the book is supposed to make a point about environmental activists, the point it makes
is an unsavory one. The activists in the book who aid Spell in his mission are either
cowardly, like Doug Evers, who provides Spell with his gear, or bloodthirsty, as in the
unbelievable, quasi-throwback-racist caricature of Japanese scientist Suko Egusa, who
gives him the material for a bomb to blow apart the water tank at the park. She tries to
convince Spell to poison the tank instead: "'It would take a thimble full of a variety of
Sarin, dumped in the tank, and that would be the end of the park. The Valley would be
clear.' 'Poison them all?' Spell saw the hairline crack running through one of her long
incisors as she smiled broadly. He wished she would give him his clothes." This book's
treatment of environmental activists reminds me of the terrible Kevin Spacey/Kate
Winslet movie, The Life of David Gale . David Gale was nominally an
anti-death-penalty film, but ended up painting the anti-death-penalty advocates with such
a lunatic brush that, by the end, you're chanting "Fry them all" with the best of them.
When I was a freshman in high school, we read John Steinbeck's East of Eden.
Our teacher used the text to introduce us to the concept of Biblical allegories: Charles and
Caleb are to Cain as Adam and Aron are to Abel! Get it? Yes, but a neat, round symbol
of a character pales in comparison to an involved, ambiguous, jagged-edged person
whose dilemmas are the same as yours. Railsback tries to have it both ways and fails.
— 9 February 2004
