Clearcut

by Nina Shengold

  Earley busied himself with the dryer, taking out clothes and stuffing them into a brown lawn and leaf bag. The glass door made a mirror of sorts; he could see Margie, stung by his slight, sorting out her underwire bras from Harlan’s boxers. Well, what did she want him to do, bend her backwards and suck on her tongue right in front of her daughter? He saw Amber Ann smirk at his cherry pink longjohns and thought, I could give you a few things to smirk about, sister.

  Reed’s voice caught his ear. Earley turned, wondering who he was talking to, and spotted him shuffling in place, speaking into a pay phone. “. . . I don’t have a phone number. It’s way out in the woods, there isn’t a. . . . What?” Reed held the receiver away from his ear and turned towards Earley. “Do we have a mailing address?”

  “Um . . . G.P.O., Forks, Wash.”

  Reed nodded and relayed the news. “No, I’m not . . . No. Look, I like what I’m doing, I’m happy. You don’t have to understand it.” He hung up and stared at the floor, exhaled hard and walked back towards Earley. “Well, that went well.”

  Earley could feel Margie listening, wondering who this guy was. “Your parents?”

  “My mom. She can pass it along to my dad and his wife at their next fight.” Reed kicked at the base of a Wascomat triple-loader. Earley was glad that Reed didn’t have on his new caulks; he might have done damage. He opened up their second dryer and stuck in his hand. He was itching to get up to treeplanters’ camp.

  “Dry enough for me.” Earley scooped out the damp blue jeans and piled them on top of the rest of the clothes, then realized he’d have to walk right past Margie again. He slung the sack over his shoulder and made for the exit, muttering, “See you,” as he passed her washing machine. As he pushed through the door, he heard Amber say, “Mom?” and Margie’s too-loud “He’s a friend of your dad’s.”

  “I bet,” smirked Reed, catching up in the parking lot. “Real bosom buddy.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Earley growled, tossing their clothes in the back of the truck like a feed sack. He didn’t see what was funny about hurting girls’ feelings and having to slink around like a low dog.

  Reed seemed taken aback by his tone. He said, “Sorry, man.”

  Earley slammed into the driver’s seat. He stomped on the gas and backed up too fast. If you think my sex life is such a big joke, he thought, see how you like it when I hit on Zan.

  EIGHT

  They’d forgotten the map. Reed and Earley agreed on the first several turns, but when they got up to the creekwash, Reed started insisting that Earley had made a mistake. “I remember that stump,” he said. “We were supposed to bear right.”

  “Not the same stump.”

  “Yes it was. I remember the way it stuck up on the top.”

  “Every stump that’s been cut with a chainsaw sticks up on the top.”

  “Not like that one. It looked like a skyline.”

  Earley stepped hard on the brake. “Do you have a clue how many goddamn stumps I’ve seen?”

  Reed looked surprised at his vehemence. He lifted his hands. “Okay, fine. I’m just saying—”

  ”I heard you,” growled Earley.

  They drove for the next several minutes in silence. Reed stared out the window, as if he had never seen clouds and wet trees before. He’s pouting, thought Earley. Spoiled brat. He dug into his Drum pouch, fished out a paper and rolled a cigarette one-handed. Reed reached over to steady the wheel as Earley twisted the ends tight and lit it up, setting his hands back onto the wheel without saying a word.

  Earley was loath to admit it, but he didn’t recognize this stretch of road. They seemed to be heading away from the creek, not along it, and gaining too much elevation. Reed glanced over at him once or twice, but said nothing. He seemed to be waiting for Earley to say he’d messed up. Earley sucked on his cigarette end and peered into the gathering dusk. He was damned if he’d give Reed the pleasure of proving him wrong. Maybe the road they were on would lead to the treeplanters’ camp from a different direction. The ruts he was driving on looked pretty fresh. They rounded the next several curves and came out at the top of a clearcut, even broader and steeper than Suhammish A-46 and crevassed with mudslides and snarls of dead branches. It looked like the side of the moon.

  “Damn,” said Reed, staring down at it. “That was a forest.”

  Earley squinted. He’d noticed a thin wisp of smoke rising beyond the next ridge. “Somebody down there,” he said, jerking his chin towards a dark, moving dot on the side of the mountain.

  Reed followed his gaze. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Two of them.”

  “Planters,” said Earley. He eased the truck back into gear and continued along the road, towards the smoke. The dots looked a bit clearer now, and there were more of them, fanned out over the slope, some slogging upward, some heading back down in an uneven zigzag. One of those dots must be Zan, he thought, rounding the bend.

  The treeplanters’ crummy was parked in the landing ahead of them. Earley parked right behind it and cut the ignition. The door to the crummy’s small cabin swung open and the guy with the blond braids stepped out, raising his right hand in greeting. He didn’t have feathers today, but the last inch or two of his plaits was wrapped in red leather cords. Probably started their natural life out as shoelaces, Earley thought. “Hey,” he said. “Nick, right?”

  Young Nick nodded. “You’re Zan’s old man,” he said, looking from Earley to Reed. “She’s on her way up. Want some tea?”

  “Sounds good,” said Reed. Earley followed him up the three steps, bending under the low wooden doorframe. The cabin was hot and close, with a tiny boatstove stoked up in one corner. Four or five planters sprawled out on the plank benches lining the walls. They looked muddy and wasted. The crewcut girl had her arm around Susu.

  Young Nick lifted the kettle and poured steaming water through a homemade basket strainer. “I gathered the herbs on this land,” he said. “Nettles and raspberry leaf. They have serious medicine for us.” His voice was so solemn that Earley could barely resist saying, “Ugh!” What made white guys decide to pretend they were Indians? The Makah brothers who’d worked on his sawmill crew, Leroy and Vance, would’ve drunk their own piss before they made tea out of nettles. Earley picked up a tube full of honey and squirted a lot of it into his teacup. It still tasted nasty.

  “I’m going back out,” he said. “Hot in here.”

  He ducked back through the door, taking his tea with him and slopping it into a puddle outside. He looked down at the figures crisscrossing the darkening hillside. He could make out the bunched silhouettes of their treebags and the stop-and-start rhythm of planting: swing hoedad, pull back, set the root plug, stomp shut. He spotted a red-bandannaed head moving faster than anyone else, traversing the bowl of the slope like a skier. Must be the other Nick, Nick who’d turned thirty, the one they called Just Nick. Beside him, and moving more slowly, pausing at every tree site, was someone he pegged as that camptender chick who’d stirred the bean soup for so long that he’d wanted to strangle her. Impatiently he scanned the rest of the clearcut for Zan.

  There she was. Off to the left, attacking the slope in a sharp, unpredictable zigzag, backtracking to fill in the gaps. Earley watched every movement she made: the fierce way she swung up her hoedad and slammed it down into the mud, rocking back on it, freeing the blade. He watched her twist backwards to grab a tree plug from one of the twin canvas bags crisscrossed onto her hips, watched her fan its roots before setting it in the ground. She moved like a mountain goat, facing into the hillside and changing position with quick, darting strides, moving up and back downwards, but mostly up, coming his way.

  The door of the crummy swung open and Reed stepped out, banging the door against the rear-mounted tool rack. The mud-covered hoedads clattered like swords. Way down on the hillside, Zan heard the sound and turned.

  “Reeder!” She dropped her hoedad and charged up the hill. Her treebags flapped behind her like low-slung wings as she let out a whoop and pr
opelled herself into Reed’s arms, flushed and panting from running uphill. He staggered backwards but held her. Her legs wrapped around his back as she covered his whole head with kisses. Reed tipped his chin up and caught one full on the mouth. Lucky bastard, thought Earley. His tongue felt thick.

  “What are you doing here?” Zan said. “I thought you were halfway to Juneau!”

  “I’m working with Earley.”

  Zan turned and saw him. She slid down Reed’s body and smiled. There was mud streaked across her left cheek and her hair stuck out under her watch cap in two thick, unraveling braids. She’s gorgeous, thought Earley. God help me.

  “Good to see you again, Earley.”

  “Yeah,” Earley managed. Life of the party, he thought, that’ll really impress her.

  Zan threw her arm over Reed’s shoulder and nuzzled the side of his neck. She was wearing a vivid orange sweater beneath her green raingear, and the tips of the last several sapling plugs poked from her treebags like little green tails. Reed reached over and pulled one out. It was barely more than a foot long, a bristle of needles that looked like a bottle brush topping a test tube-shaped root cluster.

  “What kind of tree?” he asked.

  “Doug. Douglas fir.”

  Reed looked down at the great swath of mud. “So in thirty more years . . .”

  “They’ll be bound for the pulp mill.” Reed looked stricken. Zan shrugged. “We’re just sowing a crop.” She was right, Earley thought, though it startled him to hear her say it so bluntly.

  “We don’t know that,” Young Nick intoned through the open door of the crummy. “We don’t know what people’s consciousness will be thirty years from now.”

  Zan’s eyebrows went up. “Yeah, I’m sure they’ll care less about money by then.” She spotted Just Nick striding towards them, hefting her hoedad along with his own. “Oops. Busted!”

  Just Nick walked past them, the twin blades curved over his shoulder like scythes. “Remember my friends Reed and Earley?” asked Zan. Just Nick’s eyes swept from one to the other. Reed was clutching the miniature sapling and Earley still held Young Nick’s Earth First mug. Just Nick nodded in silence and went to the crummy, swinging the two hoedads into the rack on the back.

  “Cassie, Robbo and Zach are still in the hole,” he said to the other treeplanters, peeling off his wet bandanna and wiping his face with it. Earley noticed his long hair was sparse at the crown. “When they come up, we’ll roll.”

  “Dinner,” moaned one of the planters, a gangly guy with matted brown hair and a slight walleye. “I’m fuckin’ dying here.”

  “Ditto,” his buddy said.

  Zan turned to Reed. “You’ll stay for the weekend.” It wasn’t a question.

  Reed looked over at Earley. “I’d like that,” he said. Earley stared stupidly back at him. This wasn’t at all what he’d had in mind, but when he really pictured it, what he’d had in mind didn’t make much more sense. Zan’s hands had been all over Reed since the moment she saw him, and sharing his bus with a couple in heat had its definite downside.

  Zan looked at him too. “Can you stay for dinner?” she asked. “Graywolf’s camptending. He’s a great cook.”

  “I’ve already got plans,” Earley lied, looking Zan in the eye so she’d know he was lying, that he was just being a gentleman, stepping aside. And maybe, if she was a good enough reader, she’d even pick up how he felt about that, how he felt about her.

  Zan held onto his gaze for a few beats too long. Her eyes were so dark they looked black in the twilight. “Some other time.” She reached over and took Earley’s hand, one fingertip tracing his palm. She still had her other arm slung around Reed. “I can drive him back Sunday,” she said. “You have fun tonight.”

  Earley had had way too many, but not enough to think that the world didn’t suck. The crowd at the Cedar was louder than ever, and everyone seemed to be there with a date. He tried to get Big Jim’s attention by raising his shotglass, but he was pouring out two sudsy pitchers of Oly for some high school team and their giggling blonde girlfriends. Probably all underage; Big Jim could lose his whole outfit. The hell with it.

  Earley slammed down the shotglass. He slid off his barstool and tested his balance. Still vertical. He figured a trip to the men’s room would set him straight, drain off a bit of the Maker’s Mark. As he lurched past the pool room, he saw a familiar wide back in a rose-colored sweatshirt, angrily jamming a pinball machine. Had she really been here all this time? How the hell had he missed her?

  Earley hoisted up his sagging sweatpants with one hand and walked over to where she was standing. “Margie.”

  She jammed on a flipper. “You shithead.”

  “Your daughter was with you.”

  “You could have said hi.”

  Earley leaned forward and kissed her neck, sliding his hands down her sides.

  “What the hell are you doing? There’s people here!”

  “See?” Earley said. He backed off her and leaned on the end of the pinball machine, looking back at her face. Margie looked pretty fearsome, but he could still tell she was putting on an act. “You’re not really mad at me.”

  “Wanna place bets?”

  “That’s not what I want and you know it.” He hated the sound of his voice, but he saw she was softening. “Come on, Margie, cut me a break. I was just thinking of Amber Ann. Didn’t want to get you into trouble.”

  Margie pushed hard on both buttons at once, but her ball rolled between flippers and sank out of sight. “Look what you made me do.”

  She sounded so angry he might have believed her, except for the way that her hand reached up, smoothing her hair. She still wants to look nice for me, Earley thought. All is not lost. He leaned on the pinball machine.

  “I’m a low piece of snakeskin,” he said. “Always was.”

  Margie pulled back the trigger and slammed a new ball up the chute. “Who was your friend in the wiggy pants?”

  “No one. Forget him.” He reached for her hand, but she elbowed him off.

  “Hey, I’m playing.” Her ball slid up onto a platform and set off a volley of bells.

  “I’ll be in my truck, right outside,” Earley said. “When you finish your game . . .”

  “Dream on,” Margie told him.

  Earley brushed past her, bending his lips towards the top of her head. “I want you,” he said, and walked out of the bar.

  It hadn’t worked. Earley had been in his truck for at least fifteen minutes. He’d finished the beer he brought with him and now he sat, mesmerized by the pulse of the red neon “E” as it flicked on and off at the tail end of “Lounge.” This wasn’t his night. In a lifetime of nights that weren’t his, this was up on the charts. He didn’t know which he felt worse about, playing the sleazeball with Margie or failing to hook her. Or thinking of Zan and Reed fucking their brains out in some goddamn tent.

  Earley sighed. Might as well sulk in the comforts of home. He reached into his pocket for car keys and dropped them. Of course. When you’d already lost your last shred of dignity, why not add to the picture by having to scrabble around on the wet rubber floor for your goddamn. . . . Wait. He craned up towards the window, where a dark shape was blocking the red neon light.

  It was Margie. Earley reached across quickly to steady the hinge as she opened the passenger door and got in.

  “You don’t deserve this.”

  “I know I don’t.” Earley leaned down and buried his face in her hair. Her shampoo had a strawberry scent, like something you’d find on an auto air freshener. He was so grateful he thought he would weep.

  “You think I’m some fish on a string,” Margie said. “You can just reel me in when you get the urge and toss me back over the side when you don’t. Big man with a pole.”

  “I don’t think that at all,” Earley said. “I think we’ve both got other lives, with a whole lot of crap coming down from all sides, and when we can manage a few hours together, it makes us both happier. That’s
what I think. Am I wrong?”

  Margie looked at him, frowning. “Damn you, Earley,” she said. “It’s a good thing I like your sad ass. Let’s get out of here. All’s I need now is some damn friend of Harlan’s to see me in your truck.”

  Earley picked up Margie’s hand, squeezed it and started the pickup. They drove through the outskirts of town. Margie gazed out the window without saying much, and Earley got the feeling that he was still on probation. He pulled a flat pouch of Drum from his pocket and veered the truck into the parking lot of a gas station convenience store. “Right back,” he said, slamming the door before Margie could join him.

  The pickings were slim. Pennzoil, canned string beans and Special K were not going to help him get back into Margie’s good graces. Earley went up to the counter and spotted some half-priced selections left over from Valentine’s Day. “Bingo,” he muttered, and reached in his pocket. There were two dollar bills in his wallet and seven loose shower dimes. He dug out his emergency fund—the fiver he always kept wadded up under his Buck knife—and loped out of the store with a small box of Russell Stover cremes and a single silk rose in a plastic tube.

  “Here,” he said, handing Margie the chocolates and rose. She stared at them.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “It was all they had,” Earley said hastily. Margie shook her head.

  “Harlan would never . . .” she said, and looked up at him, biting her lip. Her eyes shone in the fluorescent spill of the parking lot lights.

  “I wish . . .” she whispered, then shook her head. “Thanks, Earley.”

  Scoter swiveled around in his desk chair. The TV was playing a dog food commercial. “Two weeks in a row, Ritter? Pushing your luck.”