Damnation Spring

by Ash Davidson

  Rich swung, splits landing in the sawdust, half a cord of firewood scattered around the block.

  “Lew almost ran him over,” he said, winded, face slick with sweat.

  Look up “careful” in the dictionary, and there was Rich with his handlebar mustache, head tilted ten degrees, favoring his left ear. Still, every day, she sucked in a breath when he left in the morning and held it until she heard his truck clunk up the driveway in the afternoon. She touched the top of Chub’s head.

  “You’re home early?”

  Rich’s eyes followed her hand.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine,” he said, and swung again, a loud crack, wood cleaving in two.

  August 30 RICH

  Perched high in his spar, Rich leaned back into his climbing belt and rubbed the sore spot in his chest that had been there for two weeks, ever since Merle had pulled them out of the grove and sent them here to harvest the last of Deer Rib Ridge.

  Why didn’t you tell me? Colleen had asked after she read about the skull in the paper.

  It’s just a stunt those longhairs pulled. We’ll be back in the grove in a week, Rich had promised. Now he was starting to wonder. He looked out over the ridge at the garlic farm, then back down the east sides, where they were cutting. One lousy skull and bingo: stuck harvesting Doug fir pecker poles eighteen inches in diameter, the legal minimum, a fraction of the board feet they should have bagged by now, harvesting the big pumpkins of Damnation Grove. It hurt. Small islands of old-growth like this one, up near the Deer Rib ridgeline, would pad a few last half-decent paychecks. After that, all bets were off. At this rate, he’d burn through what was left of the savings.

  The chopper had sprayed again yesterday, blackberry canes curling up to die. The smell still hung in the air. The CB crackled in his pocket.

  “All set?” Don asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Good. Let’s get her harvested before they dump another body on us.”

  Another crew boss might have tossed the skull aside, let the Cats crush it, or pitched it into the river, where Rich’s mom had thrown her wedding band after his dad got killed. She used to slow the car on the old bridge, as if the ring might have hit the barrier and landed on the shoulder like a dropped wish penny. If he found that ring today, he’d put it toward the mortgage.

  The lunch buzzer sounded. Yellow hard hats streamed across the muddy clear-cut below, beelining for the crummy. Rich lowered himself down the spar and shucked off his gear, caulks pulling up chunks of wet dirt, weighting him as he trudged down past Deer Spring.

  Don had brought the skull to Merle. If there was one thing Merle was good at, it was making things disappear. Practically the company motto. But somehow the forestry board had gotten wind of it and pumped the brakes on both harvest plans. The board used to be all timbermen, but times were changing. It would decide at its next meeting, end of September, whether to let them go ahead. Don suspected Eugene and his big mouth, but whoever was to blame, if the rains came before Merle got it ironed out, it’d be a long, hungry winter for all of them.

  Rich hadn’t seen the survey maps, but he’d sidled up to the company’s scaler, long-thumbed Mitch Danforth, who also cruised timber for Sanderson, figuring out where to harvest the most board feet at the least expense, long enough to confirm the harvest plan for Lower Damnation went pretty far down. How far, Danforth wouldn’t say. Eugene had almost clocked the greaseball when he came out to tally their cut last week. Danforth was small and quick as a weasel, but writing up their cut he doubled in size, slipping his thumb as he measured—one thumb’s width equal to a thousand board feet—to count less, pay less.

  Shit, Danforth, Eugene had complained. The way you’re counting, you got a one-inch dick.

  Rumor was Merle was going to switch them to day rate instead of by-the-board-foot anyway, every day the same pay no matter what they cut. It would help them out now, stuck in the beanpoles on Deer Rib, but it would sure cost them later, when they got back into the grove. That was Merle, always two steps ahead. It gave Rich heartburn just thinking about it.

  Guys milled around the crummy at the bottom of the hill, bus barnacled with mud, parked behind Eugene’s rusted-to-shit Cheyenne. Eugene had stripped down to his undershirt. You’re at work, keep your damn shirt on.

  Rich still hadn’t seen the two hundred bucks Colleen had loaned them at Christmas, when their stove quit. Money ran through Eugene’s hands quicker than water. He just didn’t take care of things. He hadn’t waxed that Cheyenne since he bought her. Could use that undercarriage to drain pasta. Salt air would rust the springs out from inside a couch, rust a wedding band off your finger without wax. Sure could use that two hundred bucks back now.

  Rich scrambled over a trough of rainwater.

  “Lunch’s over,” Eugene called, Rich always the last one down. He’d put up with his share of shit over the years. Came with the territory: highest up, highest paid.

  “You hear Chevy’s putting heaters in their tailgates?” Rich lobbed back. “Keep your hands warm when you’re pushing.”

  “You find a spar?” Eugene asked, snugging down the red Sanderson cap that lived on his head like it was glued there. “Took you long enough. Thought you might be picking out another wife.”

  Eugene had been nineteen when he chased Enid, eight months pregnant, up the stairs into a church. It was the redhead in him. He wanted something, he took it.

  The young guys were using the hood of Eugene’s truck as a table, drawn to him like moths to a porch light. Quentin sat off by himself. Someone had evened out his stagged-off denims. In the old days, Rich would have trained the kid up. Used to be guys looked out for each other. Old-timers—guys younger than Rich was now—wouldn’t let him pay for a beer after Astrid moved up north and left him, just clinked bottles and nodded, as though she’d died.

  Eugene was halfway through a Baby Ruth, a V of Slim Jims corralling a pickled egg. A married man who ate like he was single. Enid should pack him a decent lunch, Colleen would say, but those two still lived like teenagers shacking up. There were so many plywood additions tacked on to that trailer house the county would have had a field day: a five-bedroom single-wide, list of code violations thicker than a phone book.

  Eugene had worked out a deal when Merle pulled them out of the grove and sent them over to harvest the rest of Deer Rib. Instead of riding the ten ass-numbing miles into town to catch the dawn crummy, then riding back out with the rest of the crew, Eugene drove himself, got the gate open, and locked up at the end of the day. First in, last out. And for two weeks, Rich had felt a twinge of envy at the sight of his brother-in-law sitting on the gate’s top rung. Rich had missed the crummy once, his first week setting chokers; fifteen years old, he’d never felt more alone than he had that day in the mill lot. He’d been there by quarter to five ever since, catching a little shut-eye in the truck until the crummy roared to life. And every morning for the past two weeks, at the end of the road was Eugene, waving them in with the big-armed gesture of a man dealt an extra hour’s sleep. There were days Rich would have traded a day’s pay for another hour’s sleep.

  Rich knocked his caulks against the crummy’s tire, removed his hard hat, and bounded up the stairs, stooping down the aisle. He pressed his tongue to his tooth to dull the ache. Colleen was on him to see a dentist. Rich must have been ten when his mother took him to Dr. Peine’s wake. Peine was Swiss, but everybody said it Pain—a joke that stuck, given his profession. Even closed inside a coffin, Rich had been uneasy of the town dentist. Peine dug, and collected. Back in those days, every time they cut a new road, they uncovered some burial ground. They said Peine pickled heads in jars. He even had a letter from the Smithsonian, thanking him for the heads. He’d been digging by the river and drowned in the flood that took out the shingle mill, bloated so bad they had to shoehorn him into the box. Klamath hadn’t had another dentist since.

  Rich pinched sawdust from his nostrils. The crummy stank of
sweat and gasoline, but it was nice to have a moment, just him and his aches. Even Pete, who’d once cracked a rib and still worked until the end of the day, was slowing down. Once the old-growth was gone, it’d be single-jacking: dropping, limbing, and bucking your own, a hundred trees a day. Guys their age wouldn’t be able to keep pace. Sanderson wasn’t what it used to be, and neither was the timber. Lucky Jim Mueller had wanted to unload the 24-7 when he did.

  Rich pinned sandwiches to the side of his lunch pail to get at the lemon loaf underneath, pried off the top slice. Jackpot: double crumb-coated slabs of butter. Normally, Colleen was stingy with it, but she’d been preoccupied, the Larson girl due any day.

  Rich polished off the cake, brushed crumbs from his mustache, grabbed his thermos and lunch pail, and stood. Outside, he popped a squat on a rotting log between Pete and Don, same order they’d sat in since grade school. The bruise on Pete’s cheekbone had faded to a sick yellow. He’d rung some longhair’s bell pretty good the night of the fish fry. He pawed at it like it itched, a tic from way back, when Pete had real bruises. Rich palmed the sandwiches from his pail—wrapped neat as a Christmas present—and tore open the wax-paper flap. A note flopped out. Rich tucked it into his breast pocket.

  Pete packed a pinch of snus inside his lip, same ropy build he’d had at fifteen, Adam’s apple that made swallowing look painful, nose so crooked if he turned his face far enough to the left, wouldn’t know he had one. When they were teenagers, a limb rammed Pete’s hard hat down and broke his nose, and guys started calling him the Big-Nosed Swede. Had a shelf in his house with every hard hat he’d ever owned, a few so dented you’d think they’d survived Normandy. As for Rich, he’d packed on a little paunch, a meatiness in his jowls that still surprised him when he shaved, but nothing like the couch-cushion gut Don had strapped on. Don’s lunch was long gone. Didn’t chew so much as inhale. Put away a tin of butter cookies in the time it took another man to get the lid off.

  A breeze swept Don’s balled-up wax paper off the log and Don stooped after it. He liked a clean work site, would hold the whole crummy hostage while he chased down a stray wrapper—don’t shit where you eat. Forget schoolteacher, he’d make a good park ranger. Might be about the only job left around here, if those hippies got their way.

  Rich took a bite and a flare shot up his jaw. Sonofabitch. He turned the sandwich sideways, slab of cheese slathered with peanut butter.

  “What kind of cheese is that?” Don asked, lifting his chin at Rich’s second sandwich.

  “Orange kind.” Rich nudged it Don’s way.

  “Nah.” Don opened his fist to show the balled-up paper. “I had.”

  Pete spat a brown squirt of juice. “You seen Pacific started using steel spars down south? Hell, any monkey can climb those—don’t need no high-climbers.” Virgil Sanderson used to take Pete with him to look at new machinery, like a hound let loose on a scent.

  “Rich hasn’t been south of Scotia in his life.” Don picked up the sandwich, took a bite, exhaled in appreciation.

  “Gail still have you on that diet?” Pete asked.

  “One percent’s not milk, it’s water,” Don griped.

  “Next you’ll be sitting down to piss.”

  “That why you stay single, Pete?”

  Pete turned to Rich. “What the hell are you smiling at, you cradle-robbing sonofabitch? Wait ’til Colleen gets to be your age.”

  “I’ll be dead by then.” Rich winced, cool air skimming molar.

  “Fucking Merle.” Pete shook his head. “Lets Arlette parade him around like a show pony and fucks the rest of us in the ass. He’s got us digging our own damn graves out here.”

  “Want to survive, have to do more with less.” Don crammed away the last of his crust. “Tree-farming’s the future, once the big timber’s gone.”

  “Any word on the grove?” Rich asked, hoping he didn’t sound desperate.

  “Watch those fucking longhairs get it turned into park.” Pete spat at his feet.

  “Damnation’s an island, clear-cuts all around,” Don said. “If the park wanted it, they’d have took it back in ’68.”

  “If they expand, though?” Pete reasoned.

  “If they do, and that’s a big if, it’ll be down south,” Don said. “Merle heard it from the horse’s mouth.”

  “More like from the horse’s ass. I’d like to know how that joker ever got to Congress.” Pete shook his head. “Can’t trust a man who dyes his hair. Right, Rich?”

  Rich shrugged, wishing he could shrug off the feeling of going behind everybody’s back.

  “You see clear-all-heart’s up to six hundred bucks per thousand board feet for kiln-dried?” Pete asked. “That’s a hundred bucks more than last year.”

  Don made a fist, straightened his swollen joints out slowly. “Ain’t that much heartwood left. Market can smell it.”

  Rich’s heart thunked. With prices rising, the 24-7 was worth more every day.

  “You think they’ll close the mill?” Pete asked.

  “Once the grove is done.” Don nodded. “Don’t need a ten-foot bandsaw to mill pencils.”

  Rich would have to talk to Merle about getting his timber in. Sanderson’s old-growth mill was the closest option; adding miles to haul it elsewhere would skim cream off his profits.

  Downhill, Eugene guffawed, clapped the bowlegged Sanderson kid on the back.

  “Look at that piece of shit.” Pete spat. “What’s he got, two dicks? Why’s he stand like that?”

  “You got anything left in that thermos?” Don asked.

  Rich poured him some coffee. Guys packed up, cut behind slash piles to piss.

  “Want some of this?” Rich asked.

  Pete held out his cup. Rich’s back had tightened up from sitting. He grunted, pushing to his feet.

  “All set?” Don asked.

  “Yep.”

  Don eyed him, gauging the distance between denial and discomfort. They all had their rusty hinges. Pete’s white knuckle had gotten so bad he couldn’t make a fist with his left hand. A bitch just to get his boots tied. Don tipped his cup back, draining the last drop.

  “She brews this shit too damn weak,” Pete complained.

  “You can’t taste shit with that shit in your lip. You’re just jealous,” Don ragged.

  “Not all of us got an old lady we can live off, Porter.”

  A flicker of annoyance crossed Don’s face. Gail didn’t make much at the school, but Don had taken shit over her working for years. Most wives worked until the kids came, but Don and Gail had never had any.

  “Is it my fault you never found a woman blind enough to marry your ugly ass?” Don asked.

  “Marsha likes him,” Rich offered.

  “No thanks,” Pete said. “I seen what happened to the last one. I’d like to keep all my fingers, thank you very much.”

  “Living alone gets to you,” Don said, and swung his lunch pail off the log.

  “Least I piss standing up in my own goddamn bathroom.”

  Rich felt for Pete, alone in that rattletrap house. Could have been him, if Eugene hadn’t hounded him about Colleen. One damn date. You afraid she’ll want to jump in the sack? What’s the matter, you forget how? He should have saved a slice of lemon loaf for Pete instead of sneaking onto the crummy to hoard it like a kid. Colleen would tsk.

  “What?” Pete asked, Rich’s affection at the thought of her showing on his face.

  “Nothing.”

  Pete went up the crummy’s steps, tossed his thermos onto a seat.

  “Crop lots. Farming trees like they’re corn.” Pete snorted. “Won’t need us, that’s for damn sure.” The rawness in Pete’s voice made Rich want to tell him. He’d need a good faller for the 24-7, when the time came. But it was too easy to kill an idea by saying it out loud.

  “Hell,” Pete said. “Not going to change it by bitching, am I?”

  “Tried whoring?” Rich asked.

  “That’s Merle’s department.”

&
nbsp; Rich offered Pete a toothpick and took one for himself, following the skid back up to his spar, skirting a spot where a log had slipped its chokers and gouged a pit deep as a grave. Uprooted stumps lay on their sides like giant molars. They would be teepeed with brush and burned. In the old days, they’d left them—redwoods sent up new shoots—but stumps got in the way of the replants. A farmer’s problem.

  He took Colleen’s love note from his pocket. After an accident—Eugene couldn’t keep his damn mouth shut—Rich wouldn’t get one for months. Only when things were calm, when Colleen sensed he’d let down his guard, would she slip a note into the pocket of his denims or tuck one up under the cap of his thermos. Come home safe to me, String Bean.

  He’d told her once how, without Lark watching out for him, he worried about falling. They were lying in bed. Something about the smooth slip of her leg against his made him talk. It was the thing that had most surprised him about being married: half the time he didn’t know what he thought until he said it out loud to her.

  Colleen never mentioned the notes. Still that shy girl behind the screen door, quiet voice he had to grab after to hear, sweet scent behind her ear—geranium—from a white bottle with a gold clamshell top. The first time he’d gone out to the garlic farm alone, he’d knocked, put his hands in his pockets. Big baseball-mitt hands, never knew what to do with them. How the hell had he let Eugene talk him into this? He’d started back down the steps, looked over his shoulder, and the sight of her almost took his feet out from under him. The way she dropped her eyes made him want to clap, whoop, sing—anything to regain her attention.

  Downslope, he heard one of the new lightweight saws vibrating, rakers filed too low—the young guys were lazy about measuring their depth gauges when they sharpened their chains, and the hungry chains stressed their motors, made their tinfoil saws kick. Only old guys ran McCullochs anymore, saws so round and heavy they’d roll down a hill like a watermelon.

  Deer Spring pooled in a gravel bed below his spar. He rinsed his hands, slurped a handful, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and took out Colleen’s note.