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Chapter 8

Liberal Shock and Dismay

January 2, 2016—day 1 of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation. From a group of approximately three hundred protesters marching in Burns, Oregon, against the sentencing of local ranchers, a group split off to occupy the refuge.

George Henry clenched and unclenched his large bony fist. Watching the evening news in his hillside home in Portland, Oregon, was painful for him. His dark eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the report being delivered on his beloved Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. When they announced that no attempt had been made to stop the occupation, he pounded his fist so loudly on his recliner that his wife jumped.

“God, George, you are out of control!” Jill exclaimed with irritation. “You need to get a grip.”

“I’m not going to get a grip, unless it’s around the red neck of one of those occupiers!” Henry argued. “They have no right to take over the refuge. Who the hell do they think they are?”

“There’s nothing you can do about it. So why worry about it?” Jill countered.

Henry paused and stared at the television, not really seeing the screen. His jaw tensed in his long, narrow face.

After a few seconds, he brightened some and said, “Maybe there is something I can do about it.” He raised his long frame from the chair that was set a few feet from the wall of the great room and stretched.

“Those sons’a bitches are protesting. Maybe I could protest them.” He adjusted his wire-frame glasses and sat back down.

Jill watched George suspiciously. Her blue eyes were steady, but her mouth carried a slight frown. She did not speak. After eighteen years of living with George, she knew he was past the point of reason. Only one question remained: what was he about to do? She silently reflected on the time he had decided to take karate lessons. His decision followed a break-in at their home. No one was home at the time, but George had obsessed over what would happen if one of them were home. He had purchased a pistol, but he wasn’t satisfied with that and started talking about both taking self-defense classes.

Jill had balked. She had no interest in being in a gym full of sweaty fighters. After she expressed her reluctance, George had corrected her, saying that the term was dojo. He went on to explain, as he often did, that a gym was a term derived from the Greek word gymnasium and that the participants of ancient Greece participated in the nude. Jill smiled slightly as she recalled the conversation. What she remembered was that George had convinced her to join with him in taking karate classes.

Jill’s participation had lasted less than a month. She was never athletic, and the demands of her normal responsibilities left her feeling frustrated with her progress. When George tried to practice with her at home, it was funny. Funny if you were watching like a fly on the wall. Not funny if you were Jill. At six feet five, he was more than a foot taller than her. His strength was too much for her, and she often got hurt when sparring. George seemed to take perverse pleasure in blocking her punches and then taking her to the ground. The final blow came when he lost control of his takedown, and she banged into a chair. She flew backward into the chair and banged her head on the arm. She hit hard enough that they debated whether to take her to the emergency room. For three days afterward, Jill sported a lump on the back of her head.

From that day forward, Jill refused to do anything related to karate, at least not where George could see her. George continued his lessons and would come home telling her in detail about his katas and his progress. After nearly two years of seemingly obsessive effort, George announced he had achieved a first-degree black belt.

The obsession did not stop there. He was nearing the next evaluation for his second-degree black belt when the Bundy brothers and other rancher supporters occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Jill was realizing there was no use trying to persuade George to relax over the occupation.

“So what are you going to do?”

“I think I might just go over to Burns and see what I can do,” he responded. “I know the authorities won’t like it, but I don’t see that they are doing anything about it, and that just pisses me off!”

“You know, George, going there would be dangerous. I mean, they are carrying guns, and they seem to know how to use them,” Jill complained.

“Aww, I don’t know. I’m just so pissed, and they are getting away with this. I may just start with some letters to the governor and to some of the other lawmakers. I have to do something! I will think about it, but I think I will go. Even if it’s dangerous. I will think about it,” he said, shaking his head solemnly.

George stayed up until 2:00 a.m. writing emails to Governor Kate Brown and congressional representative Peter DeFazio and Earl Blumenauer and Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley. Between emails, he signed petitions and complained to friends on Facebook. With every new bit of information on the occupation, he paced, fumed, and cursed.

How did this happen? he thought. The refuge is such a wonderful place. All the times I have visited, I never imagined that some bunch of cowboys would take it over and act like it belonged to them. How the hell does it belong to them? The government is letting them get away with murder. They let them off in what’s the name?

He googled it and found the name Bunkerville and April 2014.

That’s it. The government is just a bunch of pussies! They need to just do whatever it takes to get control over the refuge. I don’t care if someone gets killed. This is bigger than the people involved.

George finally went to bed. He tossed and turned for several minutes; then he tried to push his thoughts aside using techniques he had learned at Tech Space. George Henry was part owner and primary visionary of the company, but he had some difficulty completing some tasks due to overthinking. With some encouragement from his business partner, he invited a local employee assistance company to do some in-service trainings for his small staff. He had learned to remind himself of two thought-changing techniques that helped him sleep when nothing else did. He learned to ask himself if there was anything he could do in the moment to change the circumstances that worried him and then write out anything that needed to do tomorrow. He also learned to persistently refocus his mind on a pleasant environment. On this night, nothing worked.

At nearly 4:00 a.m., exhaustion overcame him, and he fell into a restless sleep. His dreams carried on the struggle for Malheur.

Cattle came in huge dusty herds, charging directly at him. Riding the front cow was a man wearing a wide-brimmed cowboy hat and laughing. He pointed a gun and laughed again. George tried to move, but shit held him like glue. Glue covered everything. Birds dying and fighting against the glue-like shit. Men sitting in leather chairs watched and cheered the struggle.

George snorted himself awake. He stared at the time on his phone. Four thirty in the morning. He started to go back over everything he had been working on but stopped himself. Giving in to his drowsiness, he finally fell back asleep. On Sunday, he did not awaken until late morning. He dragged himself to the kitchen. Jill impassively watched him slowly move his tall, bent, and disheveled body toward his chair.

“Had a rough night?” she asked rhetorically.

George nodded. “Yeah, pretty rough.”

Jill waited. She knew it would be a while before they had an actual conversation. After a brief period of heavy sighs and a sullen expression, George dragged himself out of the recliner, walked ponderously to the espresso maker, and set up a very stiff Americano. He grabbed a bagel, sat down, and waited for the coffee. He looked at his iPhone and clicked his Facebook app.

“Shit! Nothing has happened. God, I hope this doesn’t end up like Bunkerville!” he exclaimed.

Jill had some idea of what Bunkerville was about, but she wasn’t sure. With apprehension, she asked George to elaborate. Eagerly, George explained that Bunkerville was the location of a standoff between sympathizers of a Nevada rancher and law enforcement. The story behind this was that the rancher had been in at twenty-one-year struggle with the Bureau of Land Management over his grazing of cattle on BLM land. He had refused to pay for grazing his cattle on land owned by the BLM, as required by law. The rancher had claimed that the BLM did not have the legal authority to manage the land on which he grazed his cattle.

As he explained the background of the situation, George frequently interrupted himself with, “That’s just bullshit!”

When he had finished explaining the history of the standoff, he added vehemently, “That land belongs to all the people, not one particular person or rancher.” Shaking his head enough to agitate his thick black hair, he continued, “These ranchers have been getting a great deal on their grazing rights for years. They are often referred to as ‘welfare ranchers,’ and I think they are making money and degrading public land while they do it. And they are so arrogant that they want the government to give the land to them. It’s bullshit!”

George stared off into space—his long face stern and his eyes looking but not seeing anything but the images in his mind, images of cowboys stealing the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

After some time staring at nothing, he stood and announced, “I am going. I know you don’t want me to, but I think I have to.”

Jill knew it was useless arguing with him. She touched his shoulder to get his attention and said, “I would feel better if you had someone with you. Why don’t you invite Russel?”

George looked at her with a furrowed brow, his thick black eyebrows bending together to form one mass over his dark eyes. He relaxed some and said, “I don’t know if he could take the time off.”

Russel Jones was his birding buddy. Every spring for the past twenty years, he and Russel would travel the three hundred miles one way to the refuge to camp, observe the birds, and compare their photographs of birds and other wildlife. Their interest in photography had developed in the past few years. These trips and had become as important as discussing the Portland Trail Blazers over a pint of beer. Hanging around the campfire, exchanging critiques of their photos, their daily wildlife sightings, and the quality of the beer they were drinking had become like a spiritual pilgrimage.

With the events at the refuge, it was more than a philosophical debate; it was a direct threat to something that George, Russel, and many other wildlife enthusiasts enjoyed and valued. It felt like a violation of sacred land.

George liked the idea of having Russel along on this trip. It would be somebody to keep him company and to watch his back. He made the call.

The phone rang four times before Russel answered, “Hey there.”

“Hey, Hoss. How’re you doing?”

“Good, George,” Russel answered. “Except I am really having trouble watching the news. I know you have heard. About the Malheur thing?”

“I’m doing the same thing. It really sucks!”

“I know. Those cowboys seem to think we owe them a living,” Russel continued.

“Exactly! So I just wanted to let you know that I have written everybody and their dog over this. It seems like pissing into the wind, but I needed to do something,” George added.

“I should do that too,” Russel admitted. “I just hoped that somehow the FBI or whoever manages this kind of thing would just go in and arrest these guys.”

“They should, but they seem to be afraid to do anything,” George explained. “Meanwhile, these guys get a bunch of media attention, and some people see them as heroes. I hope it doesn’t go on too long.”

“Me too.”

George allowed a brief pause, then said, “I have actually thought about going down to Burns myself.”

“Really? Just thinking about that scares the crap out of me! Those guys are carrying guns, George, and they seem serious!”

“I know, Russel, but I hate to let these guys get away with this. If people don’t stand up, the authorities will think we don’t care. I haven’t protested anything before now, but now I might. I think it’s time for me to stand up for something I believe in. And I really feel strongly about this.”

After a brief pause, George continued, “I don’t want to lay a guilt trip on you, but Jill doesn’t want me to go alone and talked me into asking you. I mean, I would love to have you, but I know it could be hard for you to get the time off, and it could be dangerous,” George continued.

“Boy, I don’t know. Besides being really worried about being shot, I don’t know if I can get the time off. I don’t own my own company like you,” Russel explained.

“Yep, I get it.”

There was a pause in the conversation. George was thinking about his options, and Russell was evaluating if getting time off was a real possibility. Russel had over a month of vacation available at his mental-health job. He managed over one hundred people and six managers. He held a responsible position in the Portland metro area. He would have to see what meetings he was scheduled to attend and whether his absence would create a problem. Then he would have to convince his supervisor that he could take time off without disrupting the organization too much.

George spoke first, “I know it would be hard to take the time. It would be great if you could come with me, but I totally understand if you can’t, or even if you don’t want to. I will just have to let Jill know.”

Russel scratched his bushy brown beard and arched his back, pushing his developing beer belly forward into the desk he was using at home. “The best I can do is take a look at my schedule and get back to you. If I think I can get off, I will still have to convince the director of the agency. He doesn’t like surprises,” he explained.

“Okay, that’s fine. I have some odds and ends to wrap up before I can go. Who knows, maybe this whole thing will wrap up before we leave. Look, I will just plan to go on my own, and if you can find a way to get loose, that would be great,” he said.

Before George got home, he received a phone call from Russel. He could take as much as a week to ten days. He had checked his schedule and had one important meeting on Tuesday, and then he felt he could take the time. He contacted his director and decided to be honest about why he wanted time off. Bruce Leonard had not hesitated. He had said, “I wish I could go too. I can’t, but I absolutely support you going.” Leonard had expedited the request, and by the time Russel had called, it was all set up.

“I don’t know how much time you were planning to take, but if a week works, I’m game. I told Mechala about it, and she is a little worried, but she understood.”

Mechala was Russel’s girlfriend for the past three years, following his divorce. Russel had no children, and the divorce had gone off without a hitch. He had considered marrying Mechala, but the last marriage had left him a little gun-shy.

“Let’s do this thing!”