Clearcut

by Nina Shengold

  Even the weather had gotten a little bit better. The air was still moist, but less icy. The alder buds down by the creek were maroon; any day now, they’d pop. Pussy willows would start forming catkins. Earley couldn’t remember which day spring began. It was probably soon, or might even have happened already. He could have asked Reed, but it seemed like too stupid a question. What was more on his mind was the countdown of days till they drove back to the treeplanters’ camp. Earley was careful to keep it from Reed, but he couldn’t stop thinking of Zan. He carried her with him wherever he went, on the slopes, in the truck. She was there in his thoughts every night when he blew out the candle for bed, as constant as last year’s Miss June.

  Reed was telling the truth when he said he could cook. He could throw things together and come up with huevos rancheros or vegetable curries and stir-fries. One night he made tempura fritters from leftover chicken and yams. Earley wondered who’d taught him, if there’d been some spicy immigrant cooking in his family’s kitchen, or if it was just something he’d picked up in Berkeley. Whatever. It beat cans of beans.

  After dinner they’d hang out and listen to music, or play a Chinese game called Go that Reed had in his duffel. It was a flat wooden board with black and white marbles; the goal was to wall off free space. Earley had never been much good at games, but he didn’t mind this one too much, especially when Reed lit a joint while he pondered his move. The tape deck was playing the Stones’ Sticky Fingers. Earley noticed that Reed kept rubbing his shoulder and neck.

  “Got a cramp?”

  Reed nodded. “It kind of seized up on the slope. I figured if I just kept going, it’d work itself out.” He moved a white marble and put his hand back on his neck.

  “Want some Tiger Balm?”

  “What?”

  Earley got to his feet. “It’s Chinese Ben-Gay.” He padded into his room and came back with a small red tin. “I don’t hold stock with most of this herbal crap—some of these hippies around here would cut off their leg and try to heal it with some goddamn tincture. My mom had an aunt like that, always chasing us down with the cod liver oil and boneset tea. Sometimes you just need a natural-born drug.”

  Reed took a deep drag on the end of his joint and passed it to him. Earley smiled and filled up his lungs while Reed pried off the cap of the Tiger Balm, sniffing it.

  “What do I do with this?”

  “Rub it in. Here.” Earley scooped his forefinger into the waxy green substance and rubbed it along Reed’s neck, working it in with his fingertips. “Give it a minute. You’ll start to feel heat.”

  Reed nodded and closed his eyes. The tendons that ran down his neck were tight cords. Earley heard a sharp intake of breath, felt Reed tense as he worked the Tiger Balm into the muscle knot. “You’ve taken a beating this week. Am I on it?”

  Reed hesitated. “A bit farther down.”

  Earley slid his hand down through the neck of Reed’s T-shirt. “Now don’t take this personally.”

  “No worries,” said Reed. “I’ll pretend you’re Zan.”

  Earley groaned inwardly. I wish you were Zan, he thought. I’d massage you for real. His fingers were starting to heat up. “Can you feel that?”

  “Whoa,” said Reed. “What the hell’s in this shit?”

  “Got me,” said Earley, “but it works.” The burning sensation was spreading along his hands. “You don’t want to play with yourself for a while after doing this. I took a piss once and nearly passed out.” He was feeling a throb in his temples now, sympathetic heat. He wondered if it was the fumes or the joint.

  He thought about Zan as he worked the balm into Reed’s shoulder. He imagined her doing the same thing to him, pressing her fingertips into his skin, kneading, stroking, her hands sliding under his shirt, moving downwards.

  Reed let out a sigh. Earley’s fingers stopped moving.

  “Feel better?”

  Reed nodded, opening his eyes. “Want me to do you?”

  Earley looked at him. “I don’t hurt,” he said, putting the lid on the tin.

  Reed picked up the roach and inhaled once more, sucking the smoke deep into his lungs. He stubbed out the blackened twist in the shell Earley used as an ashtray and studied the Go board. “Your move,” he said.

  Earley pushed a black marble. He wanted to talk about Zan. It was like having an itch, poison oak or wild sumac or something. He knew it was better to leave it alone, but he couldn’t help himself. He asked Reed again how they’d met, what the restaurant was like, whether Zan wore a uniform (“Not on your life” was the answer), what kind of music Reed had been playing the night that she took him home. He asked things that he wasn’t interested in, just to keep the ball rolling and hear her name spoken aloud. Reed was eager to talk; he’d been storing this up, Earley sensed, since the moment he dropped out of college to follow Zan to the Olympics.

  “Why did she leave California?”

  Reed hesitated and looked at the floor. “She had her reasons,” he mumbled, the lines of his face dissolving in layers of misery. Zan could do that to a guy, Earley reckoned. She’d probably cut quite a swath on her journey north.

  Zan. He liked saying her name to himself, the way the sounds buzzed on his tongue. Her last name was Koutros. Greek on both sides, she had told him. Zan Koutros. Zan. Alexandra, but who has the time?

  I do, he wanted to scream at her, I have the time. It was more than just lust. It was something he’d seen in Zan’s eyes, behind all the swagger and flash, some deep bruise of longing, some untended wound Earley told himself he could help heal. He could care for her, soothe her. He wanted to wash her feet. Hadn’t Jesus done that in the Bible? Or no, it was Mary Magdalene who had washed his feet, and she’d dried them off with her hair. How did that work? Earley wondered, and thought to himself, I am really stoned. Dangerous.

  Don’t say too much, he thought, letting his eyes close. Don’t mention her lips, her wild, throaty laugh, how she chews on the side of her thumbnail, and for God’s sake don’t mention her breasts. He thought of Zan lying under that twisted motel sheet, the curve of her hips like a landform.

  Mick Jagger was singing “Wild Horses.” The heat of the Tiger Balm surged through Earley’s fingertips, right where Zan had touched him that night. He could feel his blood circling his body, his heart filling and emptying, pumping warm gallons of life. He imagined Zan’s heart beating with his, skin pressed against skin, how their bodies would move with each other, the way she would taste. His mouth felt as dry as a desert. He took a deep breath.

  “Are you falling asleep?” Reed’s voice seemed to come from a long way away. Oh, yeah, Earley thought, there was somebody else in the room. He opened his eyes, feeling dizzy. Reed was right next to him, hand on his shoulder.

  “I’m wasted,” Earley drawled, lolling back in his chair and rubbing a hand on his belly. “Better hit the sack.”

  Reed swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

  Earley rose, wavering. “Night,” he said, touching Reed’s arm.

  SEVEN

  Friday finally came. Earley was too impatient to cut wood for long. He and Reed knocked off after lunch and loaded the truck with shake bolts, climbing back and forth up the scree, lugging wood like a pair of pack oxen—a huge waste of time, Earley thought, when he’d have to shell out for a copter to fly out the rest in a couple of weeks, but he needed some cash. If they all wound up at the Cedar, he wanted to buy Zan a drink. If they wound up at his place, he wanted to fix her a quality dinner. Their pantry was down to the bone. Reed had switched last night’s menu from arroz con pollo to arroz con arroz, and they’d run out of bread this morning and had to make sandwiches out of cold pancakes. Reed needed a pair of acceptable boots; those prep school hikers of his were slowing them down. And like it or lump it, the laundry had to be done. Neither one of them smelled like a man that a woman would want to undress.

  Scoter Gillies’ old man weighed them out at the cedar mill. He paid Earley in cash, only grumbling a little when Earley asked
him to trade in a ten-spot for dimes. Vern Gillies slammed open the register and gave Earley a change roll, his eyes dripping scorn for anybody who needed to shower his sad ass in some public campground. Earley stuck the roll into his jeans pocket and turned to go.

  “You’re working up in Suhammish, that right? The B unit?”

  Earley shook his head. “A-46.”

  Vern lobbed a wet gob of chewing tobacco into a Coke bottle next to the cashbox. “I heard there’s a couple of timber cruisers from Royalton sniffing around your way. Could be a big operation.”

  Earley frowned. The last thing he wanted was somebody’s logging show in his backyard. “They’ve already shaved every hill they could get to.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” said Vern, popping a fresh pinch of snoose underneath his lip. “Those boys are hardcore. They’d shave Mount Olympus right up to the glaciers if they could get past Uncle Sam. Whole lot of oldgrowth up there in Suhammish.”

  “You got that right,” said Earley. “I like it that way.” He looked out through the screen door, frowning. Reed had wandered away from his pickup and into the sorting yard next to the mill. Earley went out to round him up.

  A hard-hatted crew was offloading an eighteen-wheel log truck. Earley nodded to two guys he knew and loped over to Reed, who was watching the crane as it swung the severed logs onto a stacker. The towering piles stretched all the way back to the chain-link fence, where a couple of piggyback log trucks sat waiting, and out to the sheds where the shrill whine of bandsaws shredded the air. “So many trees,” said Reed. He looked stricken. “I had no idea.”

  Where did you think all your newspapers came from? thought Earley. He squinted at the incinerator and said, “It’s a bone-yard, all right.” He hoped Reed wasn’t going to go off on some East Coast liberal tear about spotted owls. I’m an endangered species, he thought. Red dirt shake-rat.

  “Let’s go scrape off a few layers.” Earley twisted the dime roll in two halves and gave one to Reed. “This oughta last you a couple of showers.” He’d remembered the soap, plus some towels he’d lifted from Scoter’s motel. A deluxe operation, thought Earley, relieved that they each had some change.

  After they showered at Bogachiel, Earley got dressed in his laundromat outfit: gray sweats and a Grateful Dead T-shirt some girlfriend had given him. He caught a glimpse of himself with a rainbow of teddy bears trucking across his chest, felt like a fool and put it back on inside out. He could see Reed in the mirror, pulling on clothes that Earley had never seen before, an open-necked shirt made of Indian cotton and loose drawstring pants. This must have been his musician suit, Earley figured, but why the guy packed it to go to Alaska was anyone’s guess. Maybe he figured he’d pick up some bucks on the coffeehouse circuit in Nome. If that was what Zan went for, Earley was sunk. He scratched his chest. Maybe he’d change after they did their laundry.

  “Ready?” he asked and Reed nodded, adjusting his pants.

  They sauntered back out to the truck. Reed fiddled around with the radio dial as Earley backed up. He paused at a news station, listening to a report about Watergate pardons. “Fucking baboons,” he said. “How can they let these guys off? It’s like they can’t even be bothered to cover their tracks anymore. ‘Of course we can lie, cheat and steal; we’re the government.’ ”

  “Uncle Sham,” Earley said. “Put on some music.”

  “What makes you think I can find any?” Reed twisted the dial from country to the Bee Gees. “These guys sound like castrated hamsters. Who listens to this?”

  He tried a new station, groaning out loud at Olivia Newton-John. “Somebody shoot this chick. Put her out of our misery.”

  The way Reed talked about music reminded Earley of how guys he’d grown up with had talked about sports: loud and impassioned and sure they were right. Reed changed stations again, cursing his way through the Top Ten and a preacher or two till he landed on “This Wheel’s on Fire” by The Band.

  “Now these motherfuckers can play their instruments. Listen to this.” Reed’s fingers drummed over his knees as Garth Hudson soloed on organ. “Have you ever seen this dude? His head is the size of a barrel. You get him hunched over the keyboard and he looks like Ludwig van Beethoven.”

  “Isn’t Beethoven deaf?”

  “Beethoven’s dead. He’s dead and deaf. Most dead people are deaf.”

  “God, I hope so,” said Earley.

  Reed cracked up. He seemed looser these days, Earley noticed. The Band had put him in a good mood. His hands seemed to play some invisible instrument as he looked out the window, the wind whipping through his hair. The next song began, and Reed pinned it in two notes. “Van Morrison—now you’ve gotta give this cat big points for balls. He’s four-foot-six, looks like a weasel, he’s from fuckin’ Ireland and he thinks he’s a Negro. This must be a college station.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Songs are more than a week old. Any minute now, some chick with a wispy voice and no mike technique is gonna come on and say, ‘Hey. That was, um, Van? Yeah.’ ”

  “You had one, didn’t you?” Reed looked at him, puzzled. “College radio show.”

  “God, no. Who’d listen to me?”

  “I would,” said Earley, mock-solemn. “I’d be your Number One Fan.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “You and Olivia Neutron Bomb.” Earley pulled into the laundromat parking lot, cutting Van Morrison off in mid-yelp.

  They dumped all their stuff into two machines, one for the mud-crusted blue jeans and one for everything else, and took off for the grocery store. At the register Earley picked up a fresh pouch of tobacco and Reed bought three newspapers.

  Both loads were done by the time they got back. Reed’s red chamois cloth shirt had stained their longjohns and socks an uneven cherry pink. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  Earley looked at his underwear, trying to hide his annoyance. He shrugged. “Little tie-dye. Who cares?” They filled up two dryers with quarters and took off again, this time for Keneally’s.

  Fergus Keneally’s wife Gladys was working the register. She took them both in at a glance and decided they didn’t rate greeting. Earley led Reed back to the boot section, past counters of hickory shirts, brown Carhartt overalls, highwater jeans and a couple stray items that looked as if they’d been sitting there waiting for purchase since World War II.

  “Those are what I wear,” said Earley, pointing to a pair of black work boots with lug soles and spikes. “But these lowboys are cheaper.” Reed picked up one of the high-cut caulk boots and winced at the price.

  “They don’t sell these used, do they?”

  “You don’t wanna look at ’em used,” Earley said, “much less smell them. I’ll front you your forty percent if you need.” He was nearing the end of his wad, but this wasn’t a luxury item. The spikes gave a footing on sheer slopes and wet bark that could save a guy’s life. He’d seen more than one logger wind up at the Cedar Bar minus an arm or leg from falling on top of his chainsaw. Reed wasn’t using a saw, but he’d taken some serious tumbles. Earley didn’t want to be packing him out on a stretcher.

  Gladys came over, her plump arms folded. “You boys buying something?”

  “He wants to try these,” Earley said.

  “Size twelve and a half,” said Reed. Gladys looked him up and down.

  “What the hell do you call them trousers?”

  “Um . . . pants?” said Reed. Earley stifled a laugh as Gladys stalked back to the stockroom, her mouth a thin line. “What’s her problem?” Reed asked him.

  Earley shrugged. “We’re shake-rats,” he said.

  A couple of old-timers slouched through the door. Earley knew one of them, Gus Ritchie. He’d worked for him once, as a greenhorn just up from Georgia. Gus had taken one look at Earley’s back and hired him on doing gruntwork, rolling logs with a peavey pole, loading up trucks. He’d started out all gruff and fatherly, promising Earley he’d work his way up, setting chokers and learning to top, but it never panne
d out. A couple months later, Earley found out that Gus had been gouging his paycheck and popped the guy one, nearly breaking his jaw. Gus hadn’t sacked him right off, but he’d made Earley’s life such hell that Earley had walked off the job a week later, hitch-hiking home from a clearcut some twenty miles north, up by Clallam Bay.

  Gus looked Earley’s way and gave him a curt nod. The old geezer with him just stared. He wore his suspenders clipped onto his belt, as if neither could manage the job, and was working a big wad of snoose in one cheek. Earley wondered if he would come right out and spit on the floor.

  Gladys emerged from the stockroom, shoved a carton at Reed and went to the counter, beaming at Gus and the chewer. “What can I do for you fellas?”

  “Fergus here?”

  “Last time Fergus worked on a Friday night, Ike was in office. Try the Shamrock.” Gus nodded. The snoose chewer spit. They went back out the door.

  Reed was lacing up one of the caulks. Earley turned to him. “How’s it feel? Can you wiggle your toes?”

  “Uh-huh. These things are heavy as hell.”

  “’Sposed to be. Keeping you upright is what they’re about.”

  “Not a bad plan,” said Reed. He laced up the second boot, then stood. The thick soles, boot heels and spikes brought him a little bit closer to Earley’s height. He took a few paces, flexing his knees. “I feel like a rocker,” he said. “Like Lou Reed.”

  “Not in those trousers,” said Earley.

  “And fuck you too.”

  “Keep that mouth in the woods,” Gladys snapped. “This is a Christian store.”

  Earley walked through the laundromat door and found himself staring at Margie and Amber Walkonis. Margie flashed him a welcoming smile, but Earley wasn’t sure how to proceed with her daughter right there. The memory of crouching behind that propane tank was all too vivid; it wasn’t a feeling he welcomed. He hoped that his ears weren’t flaming. He gave Margie a stiff nod and walked right past her. Reed glanced up at his face, read between the lines, and headed across the room.