What We Take For Truth

by Deborah Nedelman

  “You know him?” Pat took a step toward Henry, caught his eye.

  “I guess so. Only grew up together, but it’s been a while.”

  “Yeah, well, I had a few things to do.” Charlie reached out his right hand and took Henry’s.

  “That your truck over there? You a hauler? All right, man. We can use a good one.” Henry stepped back a pace and looked his old friend up and down.

  “He’s OK then?” There was a hint of relief in Pat’s voice. Charlie sensed this kid was fighting hard to look like he knew what he was doing.

  “Yeah, I’d say so, Pat. He’s OK. And I’d bet he’s just as hungry as we are.” He gave Charlie a questioning look.

  “Hungry ain’t the word for it, man. That truck is eatin’ me alive.”

  Henry put an arm around his old friend and pulled him out of Pat’s hearing. “Listen, Charlie, you know what we’re doing here, right? It’s no fuckin’ daylight hauling job. You’re ready to risk it, right?”

  “Like I said, Henry, I need work bad. So don’t tell me anything I don’t have to know and we’ll be fine.”

  Henry nodded and with a slap to Charlie’s back, he turned and climbed up into the cab of the lifter, muttering to himself, “Charlie Roberge. Jesus.”

  Pat told Charlie to be back at the mill at 5 p.m. He’d tell him where the site was then and not before.

  “Henry trusts you and that’s fine, but the way things are going—fuckin tree huggers hanging out at the bar, for shit’s sake. You slip up and we’re the ones who’ll pay for it. Once you’ve hauled some logs for us and you’re in it too, then I can trust you to watch your mouth.”

  Now that he was back in Prosperity with old memories muddling his thoughts, a sense of regret wearing the disguise of duty directed Charlie’s steps. When he turned away from the mill yard, Charlie headed toward the cemetery. He took the gravel path that ran behind the mill. His boots crunched under the arbor of old cedars. Yellow dandelion heads shone all along the trail. The familiar smell of the scant sun on wet trees calmed and softened something inside him, something that hadn’t been calm for a long time.

  He followed this unmarked path as it wound around the houses on the far side of town and headed down toward the church. At the top of a rise in the road, he stood looking down at the small cemetery on his left. As a kid, he’d come here on Halloween nights once or twice on a dare, and there were the times his Cub Scout troop had picked up trash and pulled weeds around the place. This was his first view of it through adult eyes.

  He stepped through the archway and took a deep breath. As he walked among the gravestones, he recognized a few names: his third-grade teacher, Erma Thatcher; his Cub Scout pack leader, Daniel Boylton. The older graves, Jake Oliver’s for one, were at the back. One of the tallest markers, white granite with bits of mica that caught the sun, had the name Warren Tillman carved into its face. A clear memory, like a whisper directly in his ear—his mother’s voice, “Warren Tillman was such a fool. He just let it go on right under his nose.” Then her sobbing. “Almost as much a fool as I was.”

  Charlie didn’t see a deVore on any of the prominent headstones. But there were a number of flat markers, some so worn they were hard to read. He took his time.

  When he finally found her, she was way off to the side near the hedge of arborvitae, next to a pair of older markers for Minnie and Alton, grandparents who had died before Charlie formed a memory of them.

  At her grave Charlie bent to pull the tall blades of crabgrass and gray dandelion puffs. From his lowered position he glanced back at Warren’s grave. There, on the weedless rectangle of grass, a vase filled with white roses recently cut and a small American flag spoke of loyal care.

  Charlie turned back to his mother and let the weight of difference rest in a guilty fog about his shoulders. He had not been loyal, he had not remembered, he had not taken care. And now he was only here because the man she’d called “that no-good, cheating SOB” had sent him back here, back home.

  ***

  “Anybody see you?” Pat was taking his lines from some old gangster movie.

  Charlie gave him an are-you-kidding-me look. “Uh… a few deer. Otherwise, I managed to get here undetected.”

  “Look, this is no game. We don’t know who we can trust anymore.”

  “OK. Nobody saw me. Just tell me where to go.” As he spoke, Charlie walked slowly around his truck, looking carefully at the tires, testing the chains, checking the lay of the back end.

  “I’ll show you.” Pat pulled open the passenger side door of Charlie’s cab. “Holy shit. You ever use this thing? Looks brand new.”

  “I like to keep it clean.” Charlie climbed into the driver’s seat. He went through the rest of his routine, checking the gauges, the lights, setting and resetting the mirrors. Finally, he turned to Pat. “OK, where to?”

  Pat guided him out of town and up a logging road that Charlie knew hadn’t been there when he was a kid. This part of the forest ran right along the border between the national forest and Jake Oliver’s woods. Back then, nobody would have considered driving a truck up through these trees.

  The headlights shone on the muddy ruts, large rocks casting shadows. Along the right side of the road, branches of hemlock and cedar like dense fur brushed dark and soft on the side-view mirror. On the left, the forest had been thinned; there were open patches and Charlie caught glimpses of a ragged carpet of splintered wood, discarded limbs, and bark that shone red in the moonlight.

  “You guys been working up here for a while?” His hands were vibrating on the steering wheel, reading the road like tire-cushioned Braille. His booted feet worked the pedals, the engine roaring at him. But he wasn’t finding the calm that usually came with feeling the power moving up a mountain. Charlie didn’t like riders when he worked.

  “Yeah, well, we were working that north slope there,” Pat jerked his head to the left, not taking his eyes off the road ahead, “when they fucking shut us down. Still had lots of equipment up here. Couldn’t see a need to bring it all down.”

  “Yeah.” Charlie’s stomach tightened. His father would hit it off good with this kid. “So, you kept going. At night?”

  “We ain’t stupid, man. Just keep driving, you’ll see.”

  Charlie shifted down and let the engine’s growl act as his response. Hunger can make any man stupid, he thought. So stupid he can mistake dangerous for righteous and end up driving blind.

  This thought triggered the old anxiety. A litany of all the things that could go wrong played in his mind: a log would slip sideways out of the grasp of the lifter as he was loading his truck, crushing someone; his brakes would lock up, or he’d lose his lights; or most likely, he’d end up in jail, probably sharing a cell with this idiot, Pat. The only way Charlie knew to get control when this started was to let it play out, to imagine a full-blown disaster.

  Pat wouldn’t shut up. “You grew up around here, huh? Go to Cooper?”

  Charlie took his time answering. His father was hooked into this job probably through one of the older guys. Best not to play on that connection. Nathan had left way too much bitterness in his wake.

  “Moved down to Seattle when I was in seventh grade. This my first time back.” Static on the CB broke into their conversation. Pat grabbed the radio before Charlie could reach over to where it hung from the rearview mirror.

  “Empty mile three, heading for the curve.” Pat spoke into the radio.

  A voice crackling with static: “Roger that. I’m loaded at the landing.”

  “Roger that.” Pat released the button and let go of radio. It swung back on its cord and dangled above the dash.

  Charlie looked at his odometer as he asked Pat. “How far’s the landing?”

  “Mile seven. There’s a siding at six.”

  Charlie nodded. Before Pat could start up with the personal questions again, Charlie had a few of his own. “How long you think Dyer’s can hold on? I’ve seen a lot of bigger mills go under in the last ye
ar.”

  “You know it’s our mill now, right?” Pat leaned forward and turned toward Charlie. “Before Jackson Dyer died, he turned the mill over to us to manage.” He poked his chest with his index finger. “We got a contract overseas and we’re gonna to fill it.”

  Charlie took this in. “Who’s us?”

  “The crew.” Again the finger on his chest. “Guys worked at the mill and in the woods, the sawyers, cutters, choke setters, everybody. Not a lot of us left by then, but Jackson knew who would stay loyal.” He grabbed the radio again. “Empty mile five. We’ll pull into the siding at six.”

  “Copy. Loaded mile seven. Heading down.”

  Charlie scanned the road ahead looking for the siding, but his headlights only exposed the thickness of trees on his left and an open expanse on his right. They were climbing steeply now. His right wheels hugging the edge.

  “Right up there, hard to see, a flat spot on the right. It’ll hold you.” Pat pointed into the darkness.

  “Jesus. Isn’t there a spot to the left?” Charlie geared down. The engine announced itself, the jake brakes drumming.

  Pat’s hand continued to point, Charlie could hear the downhill-bound truck now; he still couldn’t see the siding, just open blackness.

  “Pull over, now. Turn her soft.” Pat gestured with the radio squeezed in his hand.

  Charlie braked down again. Still nothing visible on his right.

  “Now, asshole!” Pat yelled at him and started to reach for the wheel.

  “I got it.” Charlie steered the Peterbilt off the road onto a flat outcropping that hung over the valley. His headlights shone out into the void.

  Pat spoke into the radio. “Empty at the siding, mile six.”

  “Loaded mile six.” And here she came, growling, more than eighty thousand pounds barreling toward them as she pulled out of a blind curve ahead.

  Images raced through Charlie’s head now. The downhill truck losing control as she straightened out from the curve, heading right for them, knocking them both over the edge. Charlie gripped the wheel and let them come. The shattering sound of metal and glass, the sensation of being thrown against the door, tumbling into the darkness. Adrenalin pumped through him just as if it were happening.

  “Hey. He’s passed us. What you waiting for, the green light?” Pat pounded the dashboard.

  Charlie looked over at his passenger. If Henry weren’t on this job, Charlie just might have turned around right then. But where would he go? What else could he do?

  Pat went silent once they were on the road again. Charlie’s breathing slowed.

  Dense tangles of living trees crowded on either side and caught the edges of spray from the truck’s headlights as they climbed inland. Charlie began to get the picture. The cut was selective, precise. This wasn’t national forest anymore. This was private land.

  Henry was operating the lifter. When Charlie got out of his truck to watch him place the logs in her bed, Henry called down to him. “Hey, Charlie. That siding’s a bitch at night, isn’t it?”

  “No shit. Where the hell are we?”

  “You don’t want to know, buddy.” Henry pulled his head back into the cab and got back to work.

  Charlie ran half a dozen loads over the course of the night. When he headed down the last time, Henry jumped in the cab. “Take me home, man.”

  “Yeah? Don’t want a beer? It’s been a long night.” Charlie pulled out from the landing and headed down the mountain.

  “Yeah, well. Tavern’s closed now, Charlie. Anyway, we don’t show up in town after a night like this, man. We don’t need anybody seeing us dog-tired at five o’clock in the morning.”

  “Right.” Neither man said anything more till they’d traveled halfway down to the mill.

  “You figure it out?” Henry’s slow voice in the darkness.

  “Huh?”

  “Shit, Charlie. You know where we’re at here.”

  Charlie shook his head and hit the palm of his right hand hard against the steering wheel. “Does Rose know about this?”

  Henry sighed. “That something you need to know or are you just asking?”

  “Yeah. Forget it.”

  Chapter 10

  Charlie fell into a routine over the next week. He’d drive the muddy road up the mountain through Jake Oliver’s preserve and down to the mill several times each night, finally hauling his last load somewhere around four a.m. Then he’d crawl into bed as the sun was coming up and wake in the afternoon. He’d fix himself a meal that would carry him through the evening, then go to the mill yard and wash his truck before the night’s work began again.

  The late summer days were beginning to whisper hints of fall and there were hikers and hunters driving through town looking for trailheads, hoisting ridiculous packs on their backs and charging up logging trails.

  On Sunday morning after Charlie had fallen asleep just three hours before, pounding on the front door woke him. Walt stayed locked deep in an alcoholic slumber, snoring like an out-of-tune diesel engine. But the pounding jolted through Charlie’s system and he jumped up, terrified.

  He leaned his head against the window next to his bed and he looked down at the front of the house.

  “Charlie. Get up!” Charlie could see the ragged cuff of Pat’s jean-clad leg and the back of his fist as he raised it, preparing to pound the door again.

  Charlie threw open the window and leaned out. “Shut the fuck up! What the hell?”

  Pat stepped back off the porch and looked up. “We need to get out in the woods.”

  “Jesus, man, I just got to bed.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t. Come down here. I need to talk to you.”

  Charlie pulled his head back inside and shut the window. This job was getting out of control. And Pat—the kid was more than a little crazy. He really believed they’d be able to keep the mill open and save their jobs by stealing trees from Jake Oliver’s preserve. Charlie knew it wouldn’t work; the whole thing was plain wrong. But right now the money was coming and he wasn’t ready to walk away from the woods. His body vibrated as the adrenalin continued to course through him. Shit.

  He pulled on the filthy jeans that he’d laid carefully across the chair the night before. He grabbed the pack of Marlboros off the bedside table and headed downstairs.

  As he pulled open the door, he growled, “I don’t drive without sleep.” Then he turned his back and walked into the kitchen. Pat followed. The stuttering bass of Walt’s snoring rumbled through the house.

  “We gotta head off those damn tourists. I saw a car pull onto the turnoff for the road we’re using.” Pat pulled out a chair but didn’t sit.

  “Well, what the hell do you think we can do?” Shit. Here it comes, Charlie thought. If not today, soon. This can’t go on. “You sure they’re just hikers, not those protesters?”

  “No. Hell. No, I’m not sure.” Pat began to pace around the small kitchen. “We gotta do something. They’re going to see new tire tracks. They’ll smell something.”

  “OK, look. Those kids set up a camp on the other side of Oliver’s woods, right?”

  “Yeah. Next to the park boundary, near the top of the ridge.”

  “Right. So how’d they get there? Closest way?”

  Pat took his time. Charlie knew any born-and-raised Prosperity kid could picture all the trails through the woods in his head. “OK, probably start above the mill and at the junction, I’d take that one steep trail that switchbacks across the face of the mountain. There’s other ways, but they’d be a lot longer.”

  “If these guys are joining them, that’s where they’re going, then. They aren’t headed up where we are. Maybe you ought to follow them, make sure.”

  But it was just a matter of time; Charlie could see that Pat knew this too.

  “Me? Charlie, you gotta do this. No one around here knows you. Those assholes all know me and know I run the mill. They’d put it together.”

  “Oh, you run the mill? Didn’t know that.” Charl
ie wasn’t smiling.

  “Fuck. That’s what they think, anyway. We only need another week and we’ll have enough wood to fill the order. We can’t let them stop us now. You gotta go.”

  “Yeah. Well, I don’t gotta do anything, but looks like I’m not getting any sleep.” Charlie turned on the kitchen faucet and pulled out the Mr. Coffee and the can of Folgers he’d bought the first week after he’d moved in. “You add a few hours to my pay and I’ll take a walk up the mountain. See what I see.”

  Pat nodded. “Good.” He turned away from Charlie and let himself out. Walt kept insisting Charlie had to stay away from the café and he hadn’t had time or energy to fight him on it. He started the coffee and headed upstairs to dress. He might not be able to prevent the inevitable, but he could at least enjoy a beautiful day in the woods.

  ***

  He should have asked Pat for a few more details. The trail map in his head had been drawn by a boy who used fallen branches and deer tracks as landmarks. Over seventeen years a growing forest struggling against greedy loggers erased such delicate signs. Didn’t really matter, though. What made the most sense was to head up toward the operation, so he could see if anyone was checking them out.

  When he saw the first Private Land No Logging sign, Charlie pushed his way right past it. He looked around him at the huge, mossy trunks and up at the thick canopy of interwoven green. Yeah, Jake, I know, Charlie thought. This is a hell of a lot prettier than a clear-cut—that’s obvious. But they’re just trees, they’ll grow back. That’s the beautiful thing about it. We can cut ’em down and use ’em, build the things we need, replant, and in a few years the place is green again.

  Charlie took his time, relishing the cool, rich air on his skin and in his lungs. He’d left his cigarettes at home. A slight breathlessness as the trail got steeper slowed him. Gotta quit that shit. Get out here more. He was lost in his own thoughts, in the feel of his feet finding stability among the stones and roots that crossed the narrow trail, in the effort of his legs as he climbed. The sound of someone headed down the trail startled him—the soft clang of metal on metal, the slight quiver in the earth with each nearing footfall, and a faint humming of a female voice. He stopped abruptly and listened. Yes, definitely a female voice, coming closer. He looked up the trail, but it wound through thick undergrowth with trees so close to its edges that he couldn’t see far ahead. OK, he thought, I’m just a hiker, there’s no problem.