To Be a Logger

by Lois Lenski

  They needed a man with them—or at least a boy.

  Suddenly Joel could not bear to be left behind. He tore down the woods road as fast as he could go.

  They had stopped at the store to meet Dot Kramer. She started ahead in her own car, and Mom stepped on the gas to follow. Joel was just in time. He jumped in the cab beside Mom. The girls were in the back. Soon they left the highway and went rocking and bumping along a side road into the woods.

  Mom looked at Joel, but said nothing.

  Sandy sulked in a corner, because she didn’t want to go. Jinx teased her and that made her crosser than ever. Dot Kramer took them on a devious route, around many curves and corners and up and down over hills and valleys. Joel had no idea where they were, when at last they came to a stop. It was impossible to drive any farther. The so-called road just disappeared. They all climbed out.

  Dot looked up at the steep hill in front of them.

  “Here we are!” she cried. “Now let’s see who can be the first one to get to the top. The higher you go, the better the cones!”

  Sandy looked up aghast.

  “You mean we’re going to climb this mountain?” she asked.

  “It’s only a hill, Sandy,” said Mom.

  “Sandy, you sound just like my girls,” said Dot Kramer. “Donna and Sherry are getting so fat and lazy, they can’t even …”

  “I’m not fat and I’m not lazy!” said Sandy.

  She started up the incline. Tennis shoes with rubber soles made climbing easy. Jinx and Joel followed.

  “Hey, come back!” called Mom. “Take these buckets and gunnysacks with you.”

  Jinx and Joel came back, but Sandy didn’t.

  She was already at the top when the others got there, huffing and puffing. They dropped their load and waited for Dot and Mom with the lunch basket. The minute it appeared, Sandy reached for a sandwich.

  “Not yet!” scolded Dot. “We’ll pick cones for three hours, then you can eat. You’ll be hungry then!”

  “I’m gonna pick sugar-pine cones,” said Sandy. “They’re nice and big. I’ll get a bushel quick.”

  The cones from the sugar pines were the largest, over a foot in length, and the most beautiful. It would not take many to make a bushel.

  “The best ones are those from the Douglas fir,” said Dot, “about four inches long. They’re worth four dollars a bushel. If you really want to make money, find a hemlock tree. Their cones are only an inch long, but they’re worth seven dollars a bushel. It takes a long time to get a bushel.”

  “We’ll raid the squirrels,” Dot went on. “They like to hide the cones in damp places, where a small trickle of water comes down, all soft and mossy. Not fast running water. Look under old rotten logs and in stumps, too. Some are even buried underground.”

  They all scattered out to look.

  It was Mom who found the first big cache. On a damp mossy bank, at the base of an incline, she found piles of cones under some rotten logs. Dot pulled a few out and tested them by cutting them down through the center. They were full of seeds.

  “Good going!” she said. “Get ’em all! Clean ’em out!”

  Jinx and Joel came and helped Mom scoop them up in buckets. The bank was packed solid for a long distance. They emptied the buckets into the gunnysacks and went back for more. At last they had them all. Their gloves and arms and clothes were sticky with pitch.

  “Poor little old squirrels,” said Jinx. “Will they starve if we take all their seeds away?”

  “There’s plenty more on the trees,” said Mom. “They’ll just have to work a little harder and get in a new supply.”

  “Keep going higher!” advised Dot. “The higher you go, the better the cones.”

  They kept on climbing up and up. Actually, the work was fun. The day was perfect, cool and pleasant, the sun not too hot. Joel tried to figure out where a squirrel would hide cones. It was like trying to enter a squirrel’s mind and think as he thought. This helped him to find cones in unexpected places.

  Dot said, “Joel, you’re a regular squirrel yourself, you’re bringing so many cones in.”

  I’m robbing the squirrels, thought Joel. He looked overhead, where they were jumping and scolding in the branches. We won’t take them all, we’ll leave plenty for you, you won’t starve, don’t worry!

  His biggest haul was inside an old rotten log. It had been a mighty tree once. Now its full length, seventy feet or more, lay on the ground rotting, going back to Mother Earth. The entire heart was hollow—and packed solid with cones.

  Joel stared at the beautiful cache—treasure for the taking. After all her rebuffs, after all her cruelty, was the forest giving back of her bounty, to heal the boy’s wounds?

  A little red pine squirrel chattered on a branch overhead. He began cutting off cones and dropping them into the hollow log. Joel grinned. Why, the squirrels weren’t scolding. They were helping him! They were his friends! He laughed as a shower of cones came down into his bucket.

  Sandy, who could not locate any caches at all, came and helped scoop the cones out of the big log and fill the sacks. There was no end to the supply. After the sacks were full, Joel found some sugar-pine cones. He shook the seeds out, cracked and ate them. He gave some to Sandy. They were delicious, with a woodsy taste. He liked them as much as the squirrels did.

  Soon Dot Kramer left them to go home, after giving directions for their return to the highway. After Dot left, Mom said they could stop, rest a while, and eat lunch. Where was Jinx?

  “Jinx! Jinx Bartlett!” Mom called and called.

  But the girl did not come.

  “I hope she did not go and get lost,” said Joel. The word meant more to him now than it ever had before.

  “Joel, go find her,” said Mom, as she spread the picnic lunch on a cloth on the ground.

  “Gosh!” cried Joel. “What if she’s LOST?”

  “I told you, go find her,” said Mom.

  Joel hesitated, then started off. He began to call, “Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!” when he heard a faint answer. Or, was it just an echo?

  “Yoo-hoo! Jin - n - n - x!” he called again.

  “Here I am!” came the answer.

  He ran over and found her, sitting on a stump, crying.

  “I didn’t know which way to go,” she said. “I heard something, it growled, I think it was a bear … I got SPOOKED!”

  “Aw, come on,” said Joel. “Mom and Sandy are eating lunch. It’ll all be gone if you don’t hurry.”

  In the afternoon they moved up higher, following Dot’s advice. Going was rough, but the caches were smaller and it took longer to fill the sacks. Handling the cones was a messy job, as they dripped sticky pitch over hands and clothing. There were no encounters with wild animals. Joel was disappointed. He had no chance to be a hero.

  Then came the task of closing and tying the sacks and filling out the Forest Service labels. Dot had shown Mom just how to do it. Each sack had to be labeled with the elevation, the location, and the type of tree. Mom left two ears at the top sack corners for handholds. The hardest part of all was getting the sacks down the mountainside to the truck. They were heavy. The sacks of dry cones weighed at least forty pounds. If the cones were wet, they weighed as much as sixty or seventy.

  Mom tried to do it the way Dot showed her. She lifted a sack onto her back, holding onto the ears over each shoulder. Joel did the same. Jinx and Sandy could not even lift the lightest sack, so they pulled them. They started down the steep incline.

  “If I stumble,” said Mom, gaily, “the sack will turn a somersault and land at the bottom of the canyon!”

  “So will you!” added Joel. “So watch out.”

  Mom was trying to be cheerful, but it was hard work for her and Joel knew it. How determined she was, even when the work was so difficult. Joel admired her spunk Of course, she was doing it for Dad! That made all the difference. Joel would never have come to the woods himself today if it had not been for Dad. It was a way to help Dad.

>   They took the bags down part way, then came back for more. The girls helped all they could, and finally, by lifting and pulling and tugging, they got them down to the place where the pick-up stood. After a rest, they hoisted them up.

  It was a good haul for their first attempt. Mom was pleased, but she was too tired to cook supper when they got home. The girls had to put cold food on the table.

  “We’ll go every day now,” Mom said, “and after school starts, we can keep on going on Saturdays.”

  Sandy groaned, but Jinx clapped her hands.

  It made Joel happy inside.

  It was something they could all do for Dad, instead of sitting around feeling sorry for themselves.

  Chapter Eleven

  THE CHOICE

  “Oh, it’s raining! It’s pouring!” cried Jinx, going out on the porch.

  “We can’t go to town today,” said Sandy.

  But Mom said, “We’re going anyhow.”

  The rains came and stopped everything.

  It was early November and the rains would go on for six months, the same wet soaking rains that had fed the roots of the giant trees for centuries, the rains that had watered the forests since the beginning of time.

  The rains came and washed everything away.

  After the long dry spell, the rains did not soak into the bone-dry ground. They just washed off. They washed out the roots of trees, making them fall over in the slightest wind. When gusts came, snags went toppling, sliding over the steep slopes and crisscrossing the highways. The rains loosened rocks on cliffsides and washed out gravel and boulders.

  The rains came and stopped everything.

  Logging stopped. The men went home disgusted. They holed up for the winter, drawing unemployment compensation checks. Lowboy trailers hauled the equipment off locations, all the donkeys and shovels and rigging, all the cats and cables and chokers and everything else. Logging came to an abrupt halt for another year.

  No more working in the woods, no more logs on the landings. No more logs in huge logging trucks to be crowding the highways and dumped off at the millponds at the mills in town. The highways were quiet and deserted now, with only a few straggling cars.

  The whole world seemed to have come to an end.

  At the Bartlett house, the rains washed down the hill where Dad had logged off the trees and the road he had bladed out with his bulldozer. The rains turned the slope into a sea of mud. The dooryard became a pigpen. Mud stuck to everybody’s shoes and was carried into the house.

  But nobody cared. Nobody even noticed it. It was not a dreary day, but a happy one, because Mom went to town and brought Dad home.

  Yes, Dad was home at last. After all the long weary weeks of lying in bed at the hospital, after all the doctors and surgery and medicines and therapies, after all the worry and anxiety and tedious waiting, Dad was home again.

  Even the dogs were glad! When Dad first stepped out of the car, the dogs leaped upon him to show their welcome.

  “Down Ringo! Down, Corky! Down, Rex!” shouted Dad. “I know you’re all glad to see me, but … don’t knock me over!”

  After he went inside, the dogs followed him, barking and yowling and whining.

  Inside, Jinx and Sandy fell on their dad and smothered him with hugs and kisses. Joel just stood and smiled.

  “Down, girls, down!” shouted Dad. “You’re as bad as the dogs. Don’t knock me over.”

  There were mud tracks all over the floor, but Mom didn’t scold. Dad went to the davenport and sat down. He wasn’t strong and husky now. He was thin and white and weak. Though greatly changed, he was still the same old dad. The children crowded round. There was only one thing that mattered now—Dad was well and home again.

  “Where’s my cork shoes?” he asked the first thing. He grinned at Mom. “You didn’t throw them out, Nellie, did you?”

  “No,” said Mom. “Joel wouldn’t let me. He kept them safe for you in his own room. He wouldn’t even let me touch them.”

  Joel brought them out, all shiny and well-greased. Dad put them on again.

  “Just to see how they feel!” he said, with a laugh. “I’ve almost forgotten.”

  He got up and strode across the floor. The calks made holes in the linoleum.

  Mom cried out, “Look, Joe! See what you’re doing!”

  “Don’t gripe, Nellie,” said Dad softly. “These little old cork boots will be buyin’ you a new carpet one o’ these days.”

  Mom smiled. It hurt her to know that Dad was going back to logging again, but she knew it was bound to come. Even getting half-killed was not going to stop him. Logging was the very breath of his life.

  “No more logging!” cried Sandy. “Now we can move to town and stay there.”

  “Who told you that?” asked Jinx.

  “Nobody,” said Sandy. “But with Dad nearly killed, he sure can’t go on logging!”

  “Can’t I?” Dad laughed.

  “You are going back to logging again, aren’t you, Dad?” asked Joel.

  “Sure thing,” said Dad. “Not right now. I got all winter to get my strength back. Doc says I’ll be as good as new, time spring comes and logging starts again. That day can’t come too soon.”

  “Oh, Daddy, you’re not SPOOKED?” cried Jinx, eyes open wide.

  “SPOOKED?” Dad roared with laughter. “Of course not.”

  Joel said slowly, “There’s always danger, Dad.”

  Dad looked at the boy as if he knew what was in his mind.

  “Men don’t think of it as danger, son,” he said, in a kindly voice. “They know what they are doing. They follow one rule: Just make sure you are in the clear.”

  Joel did not answer.

  “That’s about right, ain’t it, son?”

  Joel nodded.

  “It’s work!” Dad went on. “You can’t be afraid of work or you’d better stay out of the woods. It takes a man’s strength, all his soul and body … He works like the devil … he gives all he’s got to give, and even sometimes that don’t seem to be enough … Sometimes he has to pay the price …”

  Suddenly the house shook and gave a lurch. Then it began to slide. Dishes fell off the table, chairs slid, and Jinx tumbled over on the floor.

  “The house! It’s sliding!” cried Mom, holding onto the doorframe. Then she added, trying to smile, “I know it’s not an earthquake this time!”

  The house had stood still all through the dry summer. They had almost forgotten it could slide. Now the heavy rains had undermined the foundations and dislodged the posts Dad had put in last spring. It slid a foot or two, then stopped.

  “Good!” cried Joel, relieved. “I thought we were going to land in the creek, but we didn’t.” Everybody laughed.

  “Glory!” cried Jinx. “I’m gettin’ outa here!”

  She ran for the door. But Dad pulled her back.

  “It’s rainin’ cats and dogs outside,” he said. “Stay in here and keep dry.”

  The house lurched again and everybody, laughed.

  “But I tell you,” said Mom, half crying, “it’s no laughing matter …”

  The next minute Dad had his arms around her.

  “As soon as the rain stops, Nellie, I’ll fix it,” he said. “In fact, I’m plannin’ to …” but he did not tell all his dreams.

  They sat down again. Mom put the coffee pot on the stove and got out some cookies. It was like Christmas and birthdays and picnics and Fourth of July all put together—just having Dad at home again.

  Mom poured a big cup of coffee for Dad, then told him the news—that the bills were all paid up, even the living-room set was paid for. It surprised Dad so, he spilled half his coffee and it splashed all over the davenport.

  Jinx ran to get a cloth to wipe it up.

  “You mean it’s OURS now?” cried Dad, patting the cushions. “Really OURS?”

  “Yes,” said Mom. “All paid for.”

  “Then it don’t matter if we spill coffee on it!” Dad roared with laughter.
<
br />   But he did not want to listen when Mom started talking about the taxes.

  “Don’t rub it in,” he said, getting angry. “I’ll do what I can, as soon as I can. No man can do more.”

  “Oh, but Dad!” cried Sandy. “We all helped. We gave Mom all our savings, what we made from peeling poles and …”

  “And my Rooster Crow prize money,” said Jinx. “I decided I didn’t want a mustang from Wyoming, after all. I couldn’t figure out how to get it here all the way from Wyoming and besides, I could never break a wild horse, so … I’ll just keep on ridin’ old Star up to the range, even if I do get saddle sore.”

  Dad put his arm around her. “You gave up your prize money?”

  “We didn’t want you to lose Granddad’s timber,” said Joel.

  Not till Mom showed Dad the tax receipt would he believe her. Then he could not understand it. How could a woman and three kids have done such a thing? Impossible!

  “There’s something phony about this,” he said.

  Joel was tickled to see how puzzled Dad was.

  “It was not a miracle, Dad,” Joel said. “We just worked hard.”

  Then the whole story of the cone picking came out and of the bushels and bushels of cones picked and sacked and labeled and loaded and hauled to the Forest Service. The whole story of the hard climbs to the high elevations and all the bruises and bumps and bee-stings and dirt and pitch and ruined jeans and hard, hard work; and how when they tried to outwit the squirrels, the little old buggers set to and helped them!

  Dad laughed to hear it all. He said it was “good medicine for a sick man” but he wasn’t sick anymore. The timber, Granddad’s beautiful timber, was saved and Dad had a big winter ahead, with all the things he planned to do.

  “But you have to rest for six months, the doctor said,” Mom reminded him.

  “Rest?” cried Dad. “My eye! That doctor never met a logger before. That’s all that’s the matter with him.”

  There was no holding Dad back.