by Ash Davidson
She sat down on the toilet’s closed lid. Hot tears leaked from her eyes. She cried for a long time. Ashamed of her stupid hope, her disappointment, her relief.
Maybe you’ll get one miracle. But you won’t get two.
She blew her nose, pushed the used test down to the bottom of the bathroom trash where Rich wouldn’t find it. She flushed the toilet, as though to put the whole thing behind her. In the kitchen she found the fish floating on its side, dead in the twenty minutes she’d been gone. She opened the back door, slung the water out, and stood holding the empty bowl.
November 4 RICH
Rich stood at the base of the spar tree he would limb, cut the top off, and rig with cables. Don walked a wide circle around it, marking trees with blue cut lines. This steep and this rocky, the guy trees would be doozies for Pete to fall, but they needed their stumps to anchor the guylines that would keep Rich’s spar from snapping under the weight of logs lifted into the air. This was the last stand of big pumpkins on Deer Rib’s east side. If they were still being paid by the board foot, these babies would have been a good chunk of change.
Rich watched Don hesitate before a Y-shaped three-hundred-footer whose stump they clearly needed. Its trunk forked halfway up, growing out in a half U, giving the tree the aspect of a lopsided slingshot. She was a sucker all right—only a sucker would try to cut her—almost impossible to predict which way she would fall. Suckers half this size had been twisting off the stump, knocking down good timber and killing fallers, even experts like Pete, for as long as men had cut trees. But leaving a pile of money upright wasn’t an option. Don painted a blue cut line across the sucker’s bark.
Rich snuffed his nose on his wrist. Pete stood in his chaps, watching Don work from downslope, his left arm weighted by the custom seventy-two-inch-bar McCulloch. Teachers used to tie Pete’s left hand behind his back. He’d cut himself enough pairs of one-legged pants over the years using saws made for right-handers that he finally jiggered himself a lefty. It was that or a peg leg. Pete ran a thumb up the side of his crooked nose, ready to fight.
Rich had seen his share of pissing matches over trees less risky, and though Don was ferrying between crews, he still had plenty of piss left.
“Let’s get this over with,” Don grumbled, Pete streaking uphill like he aimed to knock Don flat on his ass. It was now or never, before the rains rolled in and sent them home until spring.
“I’ll give you a minute,” Rich said, and headed down, leaving the yelling behind him. Might as well have a cup of coffee while he waited, but as soon as he rounded the corner to the crummy’s fold-in door, there stood Tom Feeley’s kid, Quentin, cradling a forearm, bleeding through a makeshift tourniquet. He’d been setting choker chains with Eugene.
“What happened to you?” Rich asked.
“Strand of cable snapped.” The kid swallowed. Rich smelled the sick iron scent of blood.
“Hang tight a minute.” Rich radioed Don. “Don’ll stitch you up.” Eugene should have radioed himself instead of sending a bleeding kid down to the crummy alone. “Can you bend it?” Rich asked, to keep him talking.
“Yeah.” The kid demonstrated. “Shit.” He grimaced. “I can’t get hurt.”
“Everybody gets hurt,” Rich said.
“I promised my mom.”
“That’s a lot of blood,” Don observed, out of breath from his screaming match up the hill. He disappeared up the crummy steps and came back with his kit, rolled up his sleeves. “Let’s see what we got here.”
Quentin hissed air through his teeth when Don unwrapped the blood-soaked shirt and doused the wound with peroxide, calm until he saw the needle and thread.
“Don’s sewn me up plenty of times,” Rich assured him.
“You going to hold this arm down?” Don asked.
Rich took hold of him by the wrist and the elbow. Quentin flinched—reflex, not resistance.
“You got a hell of a pain tolerance, kid,” Don said when it was over.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” Quentin asked, examining the neat stitches.
“The navy,” Don said, and headed back up to finish duking it out with Pete.
Quentin made a fist, winced.
“You okay?” Rich asked.
The kid nodded, surprised it was true. “Happened so fast.” He shook his head, bitter with himself.
“Welcome to the club.” Rich unsnapped his own cuff and pulled up the sleeve to expose the matching scar laddering up his forearm. “Pop a squat,” Rich said. “Rest awhile.”
“That’s okay.” The kid trudged back up into the woods.
Rich belted up, waiting on Pete to finish chewing Don a new one so he could get to work without taking sides. Pete wanted to leave the sucker standing, afraid to bust her. She’d implode if she didn’t hit exactly right. Trick was to drop her at an angle so that the entire length landed at once. One degree off and you had half a million board feet of splinters. Rich had seen the blank stare on a faller’s face after a drop like that—it could cost him his job, if it didn’t cost him his life.
But Pete could bitch all he wanted; it was his own reputation he was up against. Drop a three-hundred-footer with his eyes closed and still hammer a stake into the ground with her tip. Don rested his short crossed arms on his gut like a surly pregnant woman. Finally, Pete spat over his shoulder.
“Damn it, Don.”
Rich trudged back up toward his spar. Deer Spring should be around here somewhere. He’d lost his bearings, harvest changing the feel of the ridge.
Pete shook his head in disgust. “That sonofabitch’s head is harder than his damn hat.”
Rich chose the spar’s best face, ran one end of the steel-cored rope through the eye of his climbing belt, around the base of the spar, and back through the eye on the other end. He tied the Husqvarna to his belt and rolled his shoulders. Then he backed up against his rope, pulled it into a taut loop he jockeyed up level with his sternum, and sank his right spur into bark—Start right, that’s your good-luck foot. He flipped his rope up, walking until he gained back the slack: one, two, three, flip. Huffing, he dug his spurs in and leaned back into his rope to give his arms a break.
Widowmakers loomed overhead; any one of those high branches could have his name on it, ready to break off and crack his head like a nut. Below, the Cats had finished pushing brush into beds for the ring of trees Pete would fall. Now the machines lumbered over the rocky terrain toward the ravine, safely out of range.
Rich watched Pete figuring below. He could have been something—an architect, an engineer. The angle of the bed combined with the angle of the sucker, accounting for the limbs overhead, he had maybe a foot of leeway if he was going to lay the sucker down right. Pete backtracked to the first guy tree, a simple one. He’d start there. He radioed Rich.
Nice knowing you.
Any other faller, Don would have had Rich wait until the circle of guy trees was nothing but a ring of stumps before he climbed up the spar in the middle of them, rather than risk a falling tree twisting off the stump and knocking into the spar, shaking Rich off like an overripe apple. But Pete was Pete.
Rich’s Husqvarna swayed. He felt the rope’s creak in his locked knees. He’d learned to climb with an ax on one rope and a saw on the other. The tug of the single chainsaw rope still felt like he’d forgotten something. He pulled her up, little lightweight roaring to life, and brought her down on the armpit of a branch, limb swooping, crashing ten stories. He moved to the next, tilting his head away from the fountain of sawdust. He killed the saw, climbed, did it all again, until a tree crashed to the ground, impact vibrating up the spar. Pete had dropped the first guy tree. Lyle Whelan stood frozen. In a moment he’d snap into action, lopping off her branches and bucking her to truck lengths, but up close, a drop like that sucked the air from your lungs.
Rich wiped away sweat-stuck sawdust. His eyes still itched from yesterday’s flyover—sonofabitch had strafed them with that spray. The strap of his hard hat rubbed,
start of a helmet hickey. He snorted, spat, wished for a swig of water. This high, he should have been able to see over the spine of the ridge, but it was shrouded by mist that hung in the gulches the way cold clung in the folds of clothes when you first came inside. Inside his hard hat, his scalp itched.
The spar creaked. Rich double-checked his knots. The show had gone quiet below, wind carrying the distant drone of the crew south of them. He spotted two hard hats scrambling up out of the ravine, holding a barehead—long, dark hair—by the arms. Don plowed through the cluster, only scraps audible at Rich’s height. The fuck!—Property? Don had had it out for anybody with hair over a regulation inch since Merle took him down to the forestry board dog-and-pony show.
The barehead said something and Eugene cuffed him. The guy hit him back. Dolores’s son, had to be. They circled each other until the Sanderson kid came up behind and swept the guy’s feet out from under him. The pair of them dragged him downhill, swinging him into Eugene’s truck bed like a sack of cement.
Goddamn it. Don’t be stupid, Eugene.
Rich flipped the rope down, hit duff, staggered, legs taking a moment to reacquaint themselves with solid ground. Eugene’s truck fishtailed out, hooking left onto Lost Road.
“Gundersen!” Pete shouted. “You want to die? Get the hell clear before I drop a sucker on your ass.”
Rich tucked his gear against the trunk of his spar and loped up to the backbone of the ridge to watch. Pete climbed up onto the two-by-fours stuck into the sucker’s trunk and measured the angle. Then, balancing on the springboards, Pete cut the face—a fountain of sawdust, Lyle helping him pull the huge undercut free, leaving a mouth eight feet deep. Pete drove his wedges in, then belly-slid inside the cut to check for dry rot, like a man disappearing into the jaws of a whale. Satisfied, he hopped down, backed up twenty yards—the distance he’d be able to run before the sucker tipped—kicking aside anything he might trip on. Finally, Pete boosted himself up onto the springboards around the back side of the sucker and revved his McCulloch. Catskinners hung out of their cabs. Even Don stopped what he was doing, the air tight with anticipation.
Pete’s body vibrated with the saw, keeping the blade level, backcut straight, and woodpeckering his head up every three seconds to check for widowmakers—branches the diameter of a man’s arm quivering overhead. The sucker’s whole top shivered. Pete pulled his saw free, jumped down, and ran, a creak Rich felt in his rib cage, then ground rolling underfoot. Somebody wolf-howled. He’d done it! Dropped the sucker onto her fall bed neat as a corpse in a coffin, her butt end twenty feet high. Pete snorted sawdust out one nostril.
The afternoon buzzer ripped. Quitting time. Guys streamed down toward the crummy. By the time Rich got there, Eugene and the Sanderson kid were back. Rich eyed the empty truck bed.
“He dropped her already?” Eugene asked, disappointed to have missed the sucker’s fall. His rifle rack was empty. Never one for keeping things in their places.
“Where is he?” Quentin asked.
Eugene sniggered. “I told him I’d give him a ten-second head start. He started arguing, I started counting. Turns out that sonofabitch can run.”
“Should have put one in his back,” the Sanderson kid said.
Eugene grunted. Quentin caught Rich’s eye.
“Trespassing is trespassing,” Don agreed. “But next time, we’re calling Harvey. Got it?”
Eugene cracked his neck. The young guys were anxious to call it a day, cash their checks, and hit the bars down in Eureka. Friday six-packs made the rounds, cans dangling from plastic rings.
“Where the hell did Porter go?” someone asked, looking around for Don.
“Trash patrol.”
Pete came down, carrying his saw.
“Somebody give this man a beer,” Eugene said.
Quentin fumbled one his direction, but Pete waved him off. His hands shook pretty bad after a drop like that, whole body humming with nerves. Eugene caught a six-pack against his chest, tore one off, and handed the last to Rich. Rich popped the tab and offered it to Pete. Pete scowled—didn’t trust his hands yet. He wasn’t much of a drinker anyhow. His stepdad drank. Used to beat the living shit out of him.
Eugene slurped foam. “What? You too good to drink a beer with us?”
“Turns your dick soft,” Pete said.
“Hear that, Rich?” Eugene asked. “You old guys gotta worry about that.” He set the beer on the hood. “She getting to be too much for you to handle, old man?”
“I keep up,” Rich said.
“Oh yeah? How long you keep it up for, old-timer?”
“How old’s that daughter of yours?” Pete interrupted. “Fifteen?”
“I already shot one man today, Pete,” Eugene warned.
Quentin’s eyes slid to Rich’s. Rich gave a little shake of his head. Just blowing off steam. Though he felt a seed of worry.
“Fifteen’s old enough to breed her, ain’t it?” Pete asked, though he’d never chased a girl in his life.
Eugene’s jaw tightened. “First one of you assholes comes sniffing around, I’ll—” Eugene shook his head, took a pull off his beer.
“You’ll what?” Pete asked. “Finish your goddamn sentence.”
“You wouldn’t know which end to stick it in if she was flat on her back and staked to the ground, you big-nosed Swede,” Lew cut in. “Now, any of you assholes know the difference between jam and jelly?” Lew looked around. “You don’t jelly a dick down a broad’s throat.”
Eugene rolled his shoulders and took another pull off his beer.
“You’ve been telling that joke for twenty years,” Pete said.
“And it’s still funny. Now, tell me. What’s the best thing about sex with twenty-eight-year-olds?” Lew waited. “There’s twenty of them.”
Eugene spat out his beer, wiped his chin with the back of his arm, shook his head. “Jesus, Lew. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“It’s a joke.”
Don trudged in, dumped a handful of broken glass into an old weed-juice drum, tossed a muddy notebook at Pete. “You make heads or tails of that?” he asked.
Guys chucked their cans into the burn barrel. Eugene hung back.
“You drop him at the end of the drainage?” Rich asked.
Eugene nodded. “Told him next time we’d skin him, hang him from old Yancy’s cat tree.”
Rich climbed aboard the crummy. The bus reeked: BO, diesel. Legs bounced in the aisle. Eugene followed them in his truck, hopping out to lock up behind them. Lew stopped below the next gate and the second crew streamed out.
Rich’s arms had gone to putty. They shouldered up onto No Name Road. Near the grove, Rich looked out and spotted the 24-7 in the distance, proud as a flagpole, ache of longing in his chest he’d felt properly only one other time, nine years before: out at the garlic farm, Colleen on the other side of that screen door.
COLLEEN
Colleen stopped in the doorway of the Only, smoke and payday noise thick as a wall. Enid pressed in behind her. Eugene swooped in and took Rich away. Chub scampered off to the game corner. Colleen hadn’t wanted to come.
“Long day?” Kel asked, dealing out coasters. Nice, always was.
Colleen slid up onto a bar stool and took the beer he set in front of her in both hands, like it was warm instead of cold.
“You keeping an eye on those two?” Marsha asked, raising her chin in Rich and Eugene’s direction. “Up to no good.”
Enid’s nostrils flared, but Colleen had always liked how Marsha asked questions, then answered them in the next breath. She didn’t seem like the kind of woman to shoot off her husband’s pinkie. Honey, you think I regret it? I’d shoot off one of the bastard’s balls if he gave me another chance. Marsha grabbed a handful of peanuts. Kel rubbed a circle into the bar.
“You seeing anybody?” Marsha asked him.
“I’m waiting for Colleen to put Rich out to pasture.” Kel winked.
“Ha.” Marsha clunked elbows with
Colleen. “That’ll be the day.”
“Hey, sugar,” Eugene called, shaking the dice. Five rolls for a dollar. “Bring me some luck.”
Enid rolled her eyes, slid off the stool, and sauntered into the bright spotlight of Eugene’s attention.
Colleen thumbed condensation off the side of her still-full glass. Rich caught her eye, the corner of his mouth tugged up by an invisible thread.
“You know he had his pick, back in the day?” Marsha asked. “He was a real looker. Could have had any of us, but he was waiting on you, we just didn’t know it yet.”
* * *
Lying in bed that night, listening to Rich breathe in the dark, Colleen thought about what Marsha had said. She sifted back through her brief life in Arcata: the rabbit lamp she’d spotted in the window of the junk shop and bought with her first paycheck, the movie theater she could walk to on Saturdays, where, her second week in town, she found Daniel waiting in the red-carpeted lobby, like they’d agreed to meet there, though they hadn’t seen each other since high school. All that time, Rich had been here, waiting on her.
She watched his chest rise and fall as he slept beside her, his unfaithful wife.
After Enid had called, pregnant, and said Mom was sick, after Colleen had gone home, the weekend stretching into a month, she’d hoped Daniel might come see her. She kept a nickel in her pocket. Sometimes, to calm herself, listening to her mother’s sputtering cough on the other side of the wall, Colleen would finger the coin, turn it over and over until it grew warm with the things she would say to him. Every week when she drove up to Crescent City for her mother’s cigarettes, for the malt balls Enid craved, she deposited the nickel into the pay phone outside the Safeway. Hello, may I please speak to—and every week, the dorm mother’s stern reply. Message? She wrote him a few short, breezy letters, and then it was Christmas, then a year, then four and a half, the cancer creeping from Mom’s lungs into her bones and finally into her brain, spreading like fog through the trees. She’d smoked like a chimney, until the last day. She’d die when she was ready, damn it. Verne was a tough nut, people still said in town.