Clearcut

by Nina Shengold

  He looked up at the sky. Clouding over already, but he could make out a few stars. Reed would probably know what the names of them were. Earley threw the bones into the flames and sat licking his fingers, feeling like some sort of caveman. The moon cleared the trees. It was practically full, and he realized he’d lost track of it during the weeks of unending rain. In Georgia you knew where the moon was. Earley remembered being a kid, lying flat on his back in the scraggly grassed clay of his tiny backyard, staring up at the moon to a soundtrack of neighbors’ TV sets and family fights, his mom hollering and slamming doors, his dad hollering louder and breaking them open. How long had it been since he’d spoken to them? Had they given up wondering where he’d washed up, were they even alive?

  Zan’s parents were both in the army. He hadn’t expected that, still couldn’t line it up with his picture of who she was. Nothing about her was straight or obedient; she must have thrown off some serious sparks with a dad in the Officers’ Club.

  Earley poked at the fire with a stick and sent up a flurry of cinders. He was at it again. Well, so what. She was on his mind. Maybe he was on hers.

  The sound Earley woke up to was like nothing that he’d ever heard before, a magnified, bellowing snort. He rolled over and peered out the front of the lean-to. Elk. Twenty or thirty head of Roosevelt elk, grazing under the huge moss-draped tree in the half-light of dawn. A dusting of new snow had fallen, icing the tips of the fir boughs, and Earley’s first thought was of reindeer at Christmas. The bugling sound echoed again, this time with a clatter of antlers. Earley spotted a huge old bull at the edge of the herd, head lowered, shaking his rack at a young male whose antler sockets were empty and newly raw. What is he doing down here with his harem, Earley wondered, and why hasn’t he shed his antlers yet? Bulls were supposed to stay solo in winter.

  The bull elk had scented him. His head jerked up, alert, as he sniffed the air, checking for danger. The young male abandoned his challenge and the rest of the harem stopped grazing and froze in place, waiting for signs. After a moment, the bull shook his antlers and lowered his head.

  Earley worked his way up to a sitting position, moving with caution so he wouldn’t spook them. He slid his feet into the boots he’d left next to his bedroll, and slowly unfolded himself to his full height. The bull stamped and snorted again and then dipped his chin, as though he were granting permission.

  Earley moved quietly into the herd, feeling the elk shift their big steaming bodies around him. They stayed at a distance, aware of his every move, but they didn’t bolt. Up close they were startlingly solid, bigger than cows, with furry black necks and creamy saddles around their asses. Earley had never been so close to anything wild before. He had no idea why they were allowing him among the herd, or, for that matter, why he’d had the urge to walk into its center. That big bull could probably kill him; his antlers were longer than Earley’s arms, and the prongs looked like spear points. They stared at each other. High up in the tree, a raven clattered its wings and let out a harsh croak, and the herd scattered suddenly, racing past Earley and into the woods. He stood rooted, feeling his heart pound. It didn’t seem possible that they had vanished so fast; it was almost as if he had dreamed them.

  Earley shivered. The sunrise was back under clouds, and the wet air felt raw. He built a new campfire, wishing like hell he’d brought coffee or even a tea bag. He heated his metal canteen and threw a couple of orange peels inside it to steep. It didn’t taste too bad. He wolfed down the orange and the rest of the cashew nuts, all he had left. Then he rolled up his blanket, stomped out the embers and headed out.

  The hike back seemed shorter, though his left foot was bugging him something fierce. Maybe because it was mostly downhill, or simply because he was heading somewhere that he’d been before. Earley was starved by the time he got down to his truck. It took a few tries to turn over, so he let it warm up while he unlaced his left boot to see what the damages were. The heel of his sock had split clean through. Damn Kiwis were right, he thought, grinning: the Rainforest blew out my socks.

  Earley swung down Route 101 to the mercantile outside Kalaloch and picked up an extra-large coffee, a Slim Jim and two Hostess cherry pies. He paid the whole bill with dimes. This is the life, he thought, unwrapping the pies with his teeth as he drove north and washing them down with sweet coffee. He fiddled around with the radio dial till he came to a station with half-decent music. Then he turned off the highway and started the long climb towards home. He hadn’t passed a single car.

  “On this neeeeew morning,” Earley sang along with Bob Dylan, bouncing along the deep ruts that led up to his bus. Even after the radio signal fuzzed out in a flurry of static, the words echoed in his head. He could barely remember how grim he’d felt yesterday morning. So what if some guy who was working for him had spent last night with a woman he wanted? Earley had climbed up a mountain, eaten a fish with his bare hands and stared down a bull elk whose rack was the size of an armchair. It was a new fucking morning, goddamn it, and he was the master of all he surveyed.

  Earley jammed the truck into high gear and careened through the last couple turns. He coasted around the bend into his clearing and pulled up short. Next to the bus was a twenty-year-old maroon Volvo with a curtain of beads hanging from the back window. It had to be Zan’s.

  TEN

  Zan was sitting right there at his table, wearing a man’s plain white T-shirt and jeans. She leaned back and smiled as Earley came in. “Catch any?” she asked. Earley realized that he was holding his fishing pole.

  “One,” he said. “Ate it last night.” He set down his day pack and blanket roll, nodding to Reed, who was stir-frying some kind of curry that made Earley’s eyes water. He spotted a Sunday paper and several new bottles of spices on top of the counter, next to a tall pile of library books. It had never occurred to him Forks had a library.

  “You went fishing overnight? Where did you sleep?” Reed turned, wooden spoon in hand, as if he was accusing Earley of something. The spoon was new too, Earley noticed. Reed was upgrading his stuff. It annoyed him.

  “Some shelter,” he muttered. “Halfway up Olympus.”

  Zan looked at his head, where it grazed the low end of the bus’s curved ceiling. “You don’t fit in your house,” she said.

  “What can I tell you?” said Earley. “I’m not an indoor kind of guy.” He kicked off his boots, aware of his mud-crusted, threadbare wool socks. His sore foot was throbbing. If Zan hadn’t been there, he would have boiled up some water and soaked it in epsom salts, but he didn’t want to look like some wacked-out old fogey. He reached into the cooler and took out a beer.

  “Are there any more of those?” Zan asked.

  Earley twisted the cap off his and handed it to her. He’d meant to be a gentleman, but he was moving too fast: the head foamed out over his hand and spilled onto Zan’s T-shirt. “Jesus wept,” he mumbled, ears flaming. “I’m sorry.”

  Zan laughed, taking hold of the bottle and tipping it into her mouth. “Don’t sweat it,” she said. “It’s not Fiorucci.” Earley wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but she didn’t seem mad at him. He opened a beer for himself and sat down at the table. He tried not to stare at the wet spot the spill had made, right over Zan’s nipple.

  “What were you doing halfway up Olympus?”

  “I went for a walk,” Earley said. Why did he always roll out these boneheaded comments when he was around her? Of course he had gone for a walk; did she think he’d fly? “It was nice out,” he added, as if that would help. Just shoot me, he thought. Put me out in the pasture and drill a hole clean through my brain. I won’t miss it.

  Zan traced the rim of her beer bottle, shaking her head with a rueful half-smile. “Jesus wept,” she said. “I haven’t heard that since I was in grade school.”

  “What is it, some Southern thing?” Reed asked. He was juicing a lemon.

  “Shortest verse in the Bible,” Zan drawled, her accent pitch-perfect. She glanced back at Earley and answ
ered his question before he could ask it. “Four years in Biloxi.”

  “Did you move around a lot?” Earley asked instead.

  “Yes.” Zan picked up her beer, subject closed. Just as well. He didn’t want to get into the whole Vietnam thing, his kid brother’s medals, his own failed attempt at enlisting in high school. Later, he figured, or better yet, never. He wondered why people tried knowing each other by telling their pasts, when it was the future they wanted to learn. What would it gain him to find out where Zan had grown up, what shreds of the South they might have in common, or anything else that had happened before she’d wound up in his midnight-blue bus near the Suhammish Clearcut, with beer on her left breast and two men who wanted to fuck her?

  Damn, he thought, jamming his beer bottle into his mouth, I’ve been in the room with her all of five minutes. If she ever stays overnight, I’m dead meat.

  “Are you hungry?” Reed asked, pulling plates off the shelf.

  “I could eat,” Earley answered. “It smells mighty excellent.”

  “What happened to that chicken I bought?” asked Reed.

  “Died in the sun,” Earley told him. “I gave her a good Christian burial.”

  Zan laughed and reached for her beer. Earley noticed the muscles that twitched in her forearms. He wondered how long she’d been treeplanting, what else she had done for a living. A lot, he bet, and some of it none too savory. There was that past thing again. Couldn’t people do any better than this?

  “Reed talked about you all weekend.” Zan fixed her dark eyes on Earley. “He thinks you’re a god among sawyers.”

  “I’m the best one he’s worked with,” said Earley. “Doesn’t narrow it much.”

  She smiled. “You’ve still got ten fingers. You can’t be that bad.”

  Earley didn’t tell her about the five-inch scar on his thigh where his chainsaw had bucked up and gashed him a few years ago.

  It was hot in the bus with the stove cranked for cooking. He wanted to shed his wool shirt, but the longjohn top he had on was a mass of holes, not to mention the probable stink. He got up from the table and sidled past Reed in the tight galley kitchen. “’Scuse me, lil’ dude,” he said, laying his hands on Reed’s shoulders, “passing through.”

  He went back to his room, peeled off the spare layers and picked up a sleeveless ribbed undershirt, the kind his old man called a wifebeater. Let Zan stare at his chest for once. You’re being a bastard, he said to himself, but he didn’t care. If Zan had no guilt about flirting right under Reed’s nose, why should he? Earley looked at himself in the darkening window. He didn’t look bad with his mouth closed, he reckoned. He paused for a moment, then pulled the wifebeater over his head.

  Reed’s chickenless curry was spicy as hell. Earley had knocked back two helpings, and he felt like the roots of his hair were on fire. There was sweat running down from his scalp to his forehead. He noticed that Zan’s face was flushed, and felt vaguely annoyed that Reed’s wasn’t, even though he’d shaken hot sauce all over his rice. Earley swallowed some more beer and rolled the cool bottle against his cheek. Reed was kicked back, relaxed, one arm draped around Zan. He was telling some story about hanging out with the treeplanter gang, doing mushrooms with Young Nick and Robbo and trying to hunt grouse with rocks. Apparently this had upset the vegetarian contingent, even though they’d come back without even a grouse feather.

  “Cassie was crying her eyes out,” said Zan. “She says hi, by the way.”

  Earley must have looked blank, because Zan raised her hand to the back of her neck. “Long blonde braid?” Oh God, yes. The wafty one. Cassie for casserole. Why was she sending him messages?

  “I get the feeling she liked you,” said Reed, as if reading his thoughts.

  “Big time.” Zan met Earley’s eye. “She asked me if you had a lady.”

  “He’s got ’em stacked up like cordwood,” said Reed. “A pussy in every port.”

  “Hardly,” said Earley. Zan’s eyes didn’t leave his. She seemed to want more of an answer. Was she trying to match-make for Cassie, or using her friend as a shield to get more information herself? Earley wondered if Reed had told her about Margie. He sure as hell hoped not. “Tell Cassie I eat cow for breakfast,” he said.

  “Beast,” said Zan. Her laugh was so dirty that Earley blushed. She pushed her seat back and stood. “I’d better get back down that mountain while I can still see it.”

  Reed’s face fell. “You’re not staying over?”

  Zan shook her head, stretching. “Got work in the morning. But now that I know where you live, I can come back next weekend. All right?”

  It could have just been the angle she stood at, but Earley could swear she was looking at him.

  The week seemed to drag on forever. The rain clouds squatted back down on the mountain and stayed there, filling the clearing with fog. Earley dreamed about Zan every night. Or maybe they weren’t even dreams, just feverish, half-asleep trips to the fantasy zone. He was so full of lust that he felt embarrassed whenever he stood next to Reed. Eating breakfast together was almost unbearable; Earley felt as if Reed could see inside his head, where an X-rated slide show of Zan was on permanent rerun. He took to chewing his toast on the run as he did morning chores, drinking coffee right out of the thermos as they wound their way up to the clearcut.

  They were working together so well it was hard to believe Reed was new at this. He was unfazed by the weather and worked like a dog, so eager to please that it broke Earley’s heart. Those pale skinny arms had more sinew than he had realized; Reed could keep swinging that mallet all day. It was easy to picture him running a marathon, pumping himself past exhaustion and into the zone. If he fucks like he works, Earley thought, Zan’s already got some kind of love machine. Why is she looking at me?

  But she was. No two ways about it. When he’d come back out of his bedroom wearing that wifebeater, Zan had stopped talking mid-sentence and stammered. All during dinner, her eyes had roamed over his muscles as if she was licking the sweat off them. Earley had loved her for being so obvious.

  She was on his mind all the time. By the time Friday rolled around, Earley was hopeless. He kept trying to picture the weekend, and banging his head on the fact that Zan would be sleeping with Reed. If he could just figure out some way to get her alone. Yeah, right, he thought, in a thirty-foot bus. And what would he do if he could? Tell her that she was all over his fantasy life? Try to fuck her when Reed wasn’t looking? Any move he might make was ridiculous, doomed. Not making a move, lying still in his bed while she made love to Reed, was unthinkable. The only way to get out of this halfway intact was to sleep somewhere else tonight.

  Margie, he thought. Forgive me.

  Margie wasn’t at home. Earley cruised by the Shamrock on his way into town, and when he spotted her orange Pinto in the parking lot, he parked and went in. It was the kind of bar where men started drinking at ten in the morning and sat there all day without speaking. A staticky TV set flickered in one corner, next to a dusty stuffed bobcat; the St. Patrick’s Day cutouts had been on the wall for a decade at least.

  Earley spotted her right off the bat, in a booth near the jukebox, sitting across from two broad-backed men in plaid shirts and dark caps. One was Harlan, the other was Gus Ritchie, the asshole who’d skimmed Earley’s paycheck when he was a rookie. It figured those two would be friends. Margie was wearing a tight turquoise sweater, with her rusty hair clipped up on top of her head in an off-center ponytail. She’d put on a lot of eye makeup, light blue on the lids and dark stripes underneath. The two men were arguing loudly about some timber sale Harlan was scouting, and Margie was moving a straw round and round in her piña colada without drinking any. She looked up and saw Earley. Her eyes widened, then darted towards Harlan.

  “So what do we do then, ship logs to the Japs?” he was shouting at Gus. “We get fucked either way!” The roll of flesh under his ears was the color of beef.

  Margie lifted her hand to her hairclip and let her hair lo
ose, using the movement to shake her head “no” with her eyes fixed on Earley’s. Then she turned away, picked up her piña colada and drained it dry. There was no way to tell whether she was just warning him off or still pissed at him.

  “What do you want?” snapped the iron-haired barmaid. A couple of COs from Clallam Bay Prison turned on their barstools and glowered at Earley. So did Harlan.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just looking for someone who owes me some money.” He turned and walked back through the door, passing under the mounted stuffed rump of a deer, some hunter’s idea of humor. Earley wished someone did owe him money; he couldn’t see how he’d get much of a buzz off a handful of dimes, not to mention a place he could spend the night. Damn it all, Zan was in his bus. Why was he the one skulking around like a stray?

  Because she’s balling Reed, he reminded himself with a grind of his teeth. His front tooth, the gray one, was aching again. When was the last time he’d been to the dentist, he wondered, or any professional anything? That time in the ER when he’d sliced his leg open, what was it, four years ago? Five? Was it possible he’d been a shake-rat for five years? Christ, Earley thought, a sixth of my life. He didn’t know what that might mean, but it sounded bad. Stuck. Getting old. He passed Harlan’s black crew truck, plastered with NRA decals, and fought back the urge to piss on his tires.

  The Cedar looked friendlier. Earley swung open the door on a loud blast of laughter as somebody finished an off-color joke. He made a quick scan of the faces along the bar and was surprised to see Scoter Gillies perched on a stool at the far end. Damn, he thought, no free motel room. But Scoter might pick up the tab for a drink or two. Earley ambled over and leaned on the barstool beside his.

  “So they’re letting you out in public on Friday night?”

  “Scary, huh?” Scoter grinned. His yellow front teeth overlapped at the bottom. “Bud’s breaking in a new night clerk, so I traded shifts. Let him miss all the action.”