by April Smith
“It is wonderful,” said Jo, her smile vanishing.
His arms flew open and he held her as she cried.
FOUR
NIGHTMARE
28
TIMBER COUNTRY, WASHINGTON STATE
September 14, 1985
Derek LaSalle was being dive-bombed by a murder of crows. He shouted at them and waved his ax, but crows are territorial, and they continued to be quite bothersome. He decided he’d have to put up with it, being two hundred feet aboveground and with a tricky job ahead. He was to chop the top off a tall, straight Douglas fir and, by skill and calculation, cause it to fall in such a way that it did not kill himself or the crew in the landing zone below.
At six feet four inches and 230 pounds, LaSalle had grown up to fit the Paul Bunyan image of the Northwest logger—a big man conquering big trees. He was almost twenty-two, strong, and unusually limber for his size, which gave him the endurance, using only gloved hands and spiked boots, to free-climb the tree, branch by branch. Anyone respectful of what could happen if he miscalculated, or if the wind blew the wrong way, would have done the normal thing and tied himself to the trunk using a lanyard, but Derek LaSalle had a peculiar numbness when it came to fear of any kind.
He was also not good at resisting temptation; he had what a police psychiatrist would later call, in a grand understatement, “poor impulse control.” There were all those enticing branches; he couldn’t stop himself from starting up. It was extremely hard physical work, scaling a ten-foot diameter, but it made him feel best to be alone up high with vantage points and views that other people never get to see. He’d describe it, somewhat shyly, as a Superman kind of feeling. Right now he was looking through a clearing the lumber company had made at a lake that was miles away, silvery fog clouds hanging low. With the sun poking through the shining boughs of the evergreens nearby, everything was beautiful with nobody around to spoil it. And it always smelled like Christmas.
The crows had given up. They knew he wasn’t going anywhere. LaSalle determined where to crack his notch with the ax and how to place the back-cut, so the top fifty feet of the Douglas fir would fall cleanly to the ground where crews were waiting to trim the limbs. Immediately after he’d made his cuts he realized that he’d misread the setup. Not by much, but just enough to tilt the delicate interaction between the living tree and a level breeze from the west into an unstable danger zone.
The tree had a little bit of lean to it, and the moist wind picked up just enough to edge the top in the wrong direction from his notches, so when it did drop, the piece was ninety degrees off from where he’d planned. Instead of falling all the way down, it got hung up, landing against the crowns of other trees. And it was still attached to the Douglas fir in which LaSalle was sitting.
He calmly appraised the new situation. It was catastrophic. A massive chunk of foliage, fifty feet long, was hanging by a neck of splintered wood ten feet across, pulled by a different set of forces than he’d anticipated. It was not only gravity acting on the enormous weight of the thing, but the halfway-fallen piece pushing hard on the canopy of neighboring trees, as well as against its own trunk, that had formed a giant spring that could snap in any direction. LaSalle, with nothing to anchor him, would be swept off his perch twenty-five stories up and die. Men and equipment in the landing zone would be flattened, and the value of the wood would be lost.
He felt no responsibility for the mistake, moving on to the next logical step, which was to get the tangled branches free. Like Superman, LaSalle found himself to be the only one who could master the impossible. The solution was to lower himself on the trunk and do it all again. He reread the vectors, made a new notch and a back-cut that would top the tree off in the new location, hoping he didn’t have to dodge a mass of rolling thunder on its way down. On this second try the severed crown came loose, crashing to the ground with a roar that rumbled through the forest.
When his boots touched down, the superintendent of the logging camp, a wiry, square-jawed company man of forty-five named Bill Danvers, who wore horn-rimmed glasses and neat leather suspenders over his hickory shirt, was already yelling his face off.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, climbing again without your lanyard? How many times have I told you not to do that?”
“It was the wind,” LaSalle told him, stomping past. He’d fixed it; what was the problem?
“I can’t have this!” Danvers shouted over the booming roar of heavy equipment. “You’re my fastest climber and maybe the most productive, but you’re also the most dangerous. You don’t know when to stop. You put my hires in jeopardy and I just can’t have it!”
He didn’t have a good temper, but neither did LaSalle.
“I told you, boss. The wind shifted,” LaSalle shouted back. “Happens to everyone. I know what I’m doing. Get off my back!”
“No, buddy, not this time. This has been a pattern with you. You just don’t listen. I’m not going to wait until you kill yourself or somebody else. I’m going to have to let you go.”
“Oh,” said LaSalle, thick brows rising. His eyes were unusual, crystalline green with dark lashes. “That so?”
“Truth be told, it’s a relief to get you out of here. You’re way too reckless and immature. You want to show off, go race cars or something. This isn’t kid stuff, Derek.”
LaSalle held his ground; the only sign of the annihilating rage coursing through his body was his right hand resting on the head of the ax still on his belt. Danvers wasn’t going to wait for the kind of explosion he’d witnessed before from this guy. With a flick of the head he alerted the nearest crew members, two Cat drivers, who climbed off their machines and began to walk toward LaSalle. This all took place in a bubble of silence inside the screaming chorus of chain saws echoing a thousandfold in the empty space they’d ripped from the forest.
LaSalle’s response was to smile laconically and flash Danvers the peace sign.
Danvers spat. “Punk.”
Nobody else knew he’d been fired and there was nobody in particular to whom LaSalle gave a damn about saying good-bye, so he ambled through the camp and turned onto the road. The parking lot for the crew was a mile and a half away, usually serviced by a bus, but the bus wouldn’t be making its run until the end of the day. He’d walk.
Now that he was on the ground, he was no different from every other bum. Mild afternoon sun lit up green pastures behind pipe fences where dairy cows grazed. The bucolic scene was lost on LaSalle. The company had taken away the one thing that mattered to him: being alone up in the trees. A logging truck whizzed by with a full load, sounding its horn in greeting. LaSalle still looked like one of them, but no, he wasn’t. He’d decided to quit working the Northwest woods. He would get a job in the Amazon jungle. Washington timber country was bad luck. That hanging snag—it’d never happened before. Luck could turn on you like that, and when it did, you had to act fast. Crossing the blacktop to the employee parking lot, he spotted his favorite snake—a beautiful tw0-foot-long boa—dead, flattened by the rig, and that sealed it.
Even at this distance he couldn’t escape the angry drone of the chain saws. It played on his nerves. Then he saw Bill Danvers’s Ford pickup. On impulse, he power-lifted the log that served to mark the parking space from its rut in the dirt, heaved it over his shoulder like an Olympic javelin thrower, and rammed two hundred pounds of solid wood through Bill Danvers’s windshield, so one end rested on the driver’s seat and the other stuck out of the broken glass like a great big dick. Then he turned to his own beat-up Camaro and was halfway inside when a golden beam of excellent pure luck struck his eye. It was the sun reflecting off the key in the ignition of a black Toyota 4x4.
The truck had been pampered. It was filmed with sawdust but there wasn’t one dent. He opened the nice, solid-feeling door. Inside you had all the comfort of a passenger car—carpeting and an AM/FM stereo radio. The interior was neat as a pin, and a dangling air freshener made it smell like lemons. The owner probably k
ept it in the heated garage of a brand-new development where you could eat off the driveways. He hated people like that. Stuck on the dashboard was a photo of two kids. He turned the ignition. They were his kids now.
—
In the parking lot of a Motel 6 a hundred miles north of San Francisco, Derek LaSalle stole the license plates off a Buick and switched his out. (The Toyota came with a complete tool set.) In Sausalito he flipped the old plates into the bay and feasted on an obscene breakfast of scrambled eggs, smoked herring, and pancakes with whipped cream and strawberries in a joint overlooking the boats. He drove across the bridge and didn’t even mind the morning rush-hour traffic, just turned up the stereo and cruised in comfort into San Francisco, gleaming and fantastic, like something off a psychedelic record album cover. He made his way to the Haight-Ashbury district. Working shop by shop, LaSalle pawned everything he’d found in the back of the truck. It looked like the yuppie owner had been about to go on a camping trip, because it was loaded with brand-new stuff, including a camera bag with a Nikon and two lenses. He walked away with $476 and a lid of weed he’d scored on the street.
LaSalle drove to the suburbs and hit the appliance stores, gorging on items that would bring him good money—Epson pocket TVs, Polaroid cameras, Casio watches, VHS players, and a Walkman for himself—using the credit cards Mr. Toyota had considerately left in his wallet in the glove compartment. He bought two bags of jeans and shirts at the Gap, a pair of Ray-Bans, a Nike tracksuit, and Converse sneakers, size fourteen. He’d never paid for a haircut in his life, and he was laughing out loud to himself when he walked into the place in the mall, but he had to admit when they got through that he looked a lot like the golden boy in Duran Duran.
He planned to spend the night with an old girlfriend named Taylor, and sell the truck for an awesome score. Then he’d hang out with Taylor until he got a gig cutting big trees in Brazil or maybe Costa Rica, where he’d have enough money to veg on the beach for the rest of his life. He looked her up in the phone book and she was still in North Beach, so he headed that way. The evening rush-hour traffic wasn’t so much fun this time, and it was a bitch to find a parking space. This city was not cooperating. He had to trudge uphill to the triple-decker Victorian, still as seedy as he remembered it, and her balcony, on the second floor, was still jammed with wind chimes and macramé junk, which raised his hopes that everything would be just like five years ago, until he saw her coming up the street pushing a baby stroller.
It was definitely Taylor: long deep-honey hair and skinny legs, a plain-okay face, wearing one of her crazy thrift-store outfits—go-go boots, a dead person’s dress, a poncho, a straw hat, who knew what—squinting suspiciously up the street like someone might be lying in wait on her doorstep, who happened to be LaSalle.
“Derek!” she said, instantly on guard. “I thought you were still in prison.”
“Nah.”
Five years ago the sight of him would have caused a panic attack. Now she was stronger. She inspected his clothes and sandy-blond hair layered to the shoulder, not trusting the transformation. His eyes hadn’t changed—the shiny bright green eyes that never seemed to settle.
“You look good,” she said, pacifying him.
“You look exactly the same,” he said approvingly. “I see the neighborhood hasn’t been yuppified.”
“Yet.”
LaSalle was pleased that they could still agree on some things.
“This is Kyle.”
Taylor maneuvered the stroller so Derek could see the baby. It was sleeping. It had kinky hair and dark brown skin. Derek was repulsed. No, they didn’t agree at all. How could she do it with a black guy and raise his half-breed?
Taylor saw his disgust. “I’m married,” she lied. “What about you?” she asked, challenging him with an unblinking stare.
“Oh, I’m married, too.” Derek whipped out the photo of Mr. Toyota’s children. “Want to get something to eat?”
“Are you serious?”
“I’m good now. I’m in rehab.”
Taylor did not believe a word. She pushed the stroller toward the steps of the weathered porch as quickly as she could without looking like she was trying to escape. The last thing she wanted was for Derek to run into Kyle’s father upstairs.
“Can I help you with that?” LaSalle offered.
She jumped between him and the child. “No!”
“Don’t freak. I’m just back for a visit. I need money,” he added plaintively, even though by tomorrow he’d have thousands.
“There’s an ATM at the supermarket,” Taylor said.
LaSalle’s lids drifted down over pleading eyes. “Can you help me out?”
She hesitated, then decided it was worth it to get rid of him. She wheeled the stroller around and flew down the hill. By the time LaSalle had trotted after her, she was withdrawing fifty dollars from the machine outside the market.
“This is all I can give you.”
“I’ll walk you to the house.”
“No, don’t.”
The doors to the market opened automatically. Taylor seized the opportunity to get away by pushing the stroller inside.
“Don’t you say good-bye?” LaSalle called after her.
The threat in his voice made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. The doors closed and she pretended not to hear. She strongly suspected he was violating parole and considered calling the police, but was afraid to start the whole thing all over again. The restraining order. The long months of counseling. White as a sheet, she watched through the window until Derek LaSalle was gone, shaking so violently that a stranger stopped to ask if she was okay.
—
LaSalle walked six blocks to the truck, thinking that San Francisco might be a better idea than Brazil. North Beach was crawling with nude bars, and Berkeley would always be ripe with chicks. He could rent a place, take a breather. Go to a Giants game. Who else did he know from his dealer days that might still be around? Just as he was ticking off the list he came to the spot where he’d parked the truck. It was no longer there. In its place were a vacant curb and an Asian guy in a red jacket standing under an umbrella. Now he noticed the fancy Chinese restaurant and realized that he’d ended up in the worst bad luck parking space in the Bay Area. For Christ’s sake, a dragon in the window? Everything the color red? He was in deep shit.
“I’ll bet you own a black Toyota,” the parking guy said. “Sorry, man. It just got towed. After six it’s valet parking.” He pointed to a street sign that said as much. “Do you want me to call a cab? Cost you maybe fifteen bucks. The police station where they take it isn’t that far.”
For all sorts of reasons, reclaiming the stolen truck that contained his stolen fortune was not feasible.
“Truthfully, it belongs to a friend,” LaSalle admitted.
“Bummer for him.”
LaSalle went into the nearest bar and stayed until daybreak. There were many, many things wrong, chief of which were Chinese and blacks taking over American jobs. He was a fountain of hurt and betrayal, but a lot of people agreed with him, and he made some good and lasting friends. Someone took him, as requested, to the Greyhound station, where LaSalle was able to clearly announce to the ticket man that he was going to Bozeman, Montana, to see his brother, Amos. The man told him to wait on the bench. The next bus would leave in six hours.
BOZEMAN, MONTANA
LaSalle awoke in a magical place. He was in an alley, but not just any alley. It was the back side of an old building with signs painted on the rose-colored bricks, beautifully faded words over words from days gone by, like pictures in a dream—STORE OF THE NG BORAX DELICIOUS MOON PIES—and yet there were also rows of windows with curtains and shades where people were really living. The insides of the windows had been painted bright orange. There was newer graffiti that had been rubbed away so the present was even more faded than the past. You could stare and stare at that ghost writing and never see all the parts of it.
LaSalle gazed at t
he wall a long time until the scent of marijuana caused him to look to his left, where a black man was sitting beside him, leaning against the chain link and smoking a pipe. He could have been anywhere from forty to sixty years old. He wore a yellow beanie and a blue coat with the tattered cuffs of different shirts showing underneath. LaSalle would have gotten up and moved, but there was something psychic about this guy. His eyes were closed and he had long, innocent lashes. His soft wide lips, surrounded by a thick black goatee, were curled around the stem of the pipe, and he was taking it all in, not just the smoke, but something else, like music. Like he was playing silent music on the pipe. Behind him were a warehouse and a row of white trucks, concrete loading bays. The dude was tranquil and still.
His street name was Buzz. He told LaSalle the reason he got high was because he had been wounded in Vietnam. Once he sat, he was down for the count. Walking was a trial. LaSalle took the pipe when it was offered and sucked greedily. He noticed another drifter, maybe twenty, wearing a hunting cap, who eyed him hungrily while he smoked. Generously, LaSalle passed Buzz’s pipe to the young man, explaining that he was a Christian.
At this, Buzz pulled a small, supple Bible from the pocket of his ragged peacoat and waved it in LaSalle’s face with a gold-toothed grin. They exchanged black power handshakes and LaSalle affirmed that he, too, was “a brother.” Buzz said he knew where the shelter was. It would be serving lunch. LaSalle helped him stand and saw that his buddy was in bad shape, one leg longer than the other. It took them a while to get there—the Salvation Army Center of Hope—and it was a raw, freezing day.
It wasn’t hard to act grateful. It just poured out of you when you got into the warm and took your place at the end of an orderly line of men. LaSalle chorused in with the exclamations of “Thank you, Lord!” as they filed past a folding table laid out with paper bowls of chili, brownies, and potato chips. A woman and her two girls stood behind the table with cheerful greetings. The mother wore a calico prairie dress down to the floor with a sweater underneath it and plastic gloves. The girls were twins, squeaky clean, wearing dresses, with their hair neatly parted and pulled into braids. “Want a brownie? Take two!” they chirped, not at all afraid of the grubby men who shuffled by wearing cowboy hats and fishing caps, leather jackets and parts of cast-off suits. The men kept their heads down and didn’t smile or chatter like the little girls.