Clearcut

by Nina Shengold

  “Have thirds,” he told Reed. “We’ve got gallons.”

  “I’m done. How about you, Zan? More geoduck soup?”

  Zan shook her head. The tape deck in Earley’s room flipped over again, and she pushed back her chair. “That’s enough Mr. Pitiful.”

  “Change it,” said Reed. “Earley’s got other tapes. At least four of them.”

  “Fuck you, I’ve got ten at least.”

  “Black Sabbath does not count as music. Neither does Aqualung.”

  “Fascist,” said Earley. “You just don’t appreciate metal.”

  “I’d rather listen to you play the chainsaw,” said Reed, tipping back his beer. Zan came back from Earley’s room with the guitar.

  “Play something,” she said to Reed, holding it out.

  “I don’t really feel like it.”

  “Play something bad,” Earley said.

  Reed reached back and flopped the guitar in his lap. Without stopping to tune it, he strummed a few loud minor chords. “There is . . . a HOUSE . . . in New Orleans . . .”

  “Dig it,” said Earley, and joined him. “They CAAAAALLL the Rising SUNNN!”

  “You sound like a pair of coyotes,” said Zan.

  Earley threw back his head and howled as Reed kept on singing, “It’s been the ruin of many a poor boy . . .”

  “. . . and GAWD, I kno-ow I’m one.” Earley’s voice rose in a falsetto whoop, as Reed slammed a last chord. They both cracked up. Reed slapped Earley five.

  “Listen to you, big man, you’re a regular John Fogerty.”

  “I can shatter an eardrum,” said Earley.

  “You got the gift, man. Bred in the bone.”

  “It’s that Southern thang,” Earley drawled. “All that hogcallin’ out thar in the cotton fields.”

  “All that poon in the cotton fields.”

  “That too, lil’ dude.” They slapped five again, laughing. Earley reached for his bottle and noticed that Zan’s smile looked pasted on.

  “How do you get any work done?” she asked, and he realized she felt left out.

  “We shut up,” Earley said. “No singing in the clearcut.”

  “That’s right,” said Reed. “Deadly serious. Men at work.” He played a quicksilver run of notes, then stopped abruptly and wiggled his fingers in the air.

  “Stiff,” he said.

  “That makes two of us,” Earley said, running his hand down Zan’s arm. She shook her head.

  “Save it.” She picked up the chowder bowls.

  “Leave those,” said Reed. “I’ll wash them tomorrow.”

  “I’m just getting rid of the live stuff.” Zan banged the bowls down on the counter.

  She’s pissed about something, thought Earley, wondering why she’d rebuffed him. Was she upset that he’d hit on her in front of Reed? Or she just didn’t dig Eric Burdon? Whatever the problem, he’d better make nice or she’d walk out that door.

  “The live stuff?” he echoed.

  “That’s what Lester, the cook at my first greasy spoon, used to say.”

  “Where was this?” Earley asked, gazing at her in rapt fascination. It wasn’t that much of an act; he wanted to hear every detail Zan offered about her life.

  She paused for a moment, as if she wasn’t sure that she wanted to answer. Her eyes glinted with something that could have been pain. “Sweetwater, Texas.”

  “You have hit the hot spots.”

  “The army can pick ’em. I sat out Saigon, though.”

  “How’d you manage that?” Earley was drinking this up.

  “I left home. My folks went to Vietnam, I went to Baja.” Zan slammed a lid onto a pot full of leftover salad and stuffed it into the cooler. “Hitched a ride on the back of a draft-dodger’s Harley. I turned sixteen in Cabo San Lucas.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Reed, with an edge in his voice. He sounded resentful that Earley had gotten her talking so easily.

  “Sixteen in Mexico. What did you do about money?”

  “I lived,” said Zan. She picked up Reed’s beer bottle, draining the dregs. Earley waited for her to say more, but she didn’t.

  “Hard times,” he said softly. Zan shrugged.

  “It was better than ’Nam.” She looked at Earley. “How’d you get out of the draft? Reed lucked out with his lottery number.”

  “327,” said Reed.

  “4-F,” said Earley.

  “4-F?” Zan looked incredulous. “You?”

  “Too tall,” Earley mumbled. It still made his ears burn; his kid brother had come home with medals, and he’d been turned down. True, Earley had tried to sneak in underage, but the part that still stung was the sergeant who’d sneered at his gangling limbs and told him to go home. “And skinny. I looked like a lamppost.”

  “Not anymore,” said Zan, eyeing his biceps.

  “A decade of moose work’ll do that,” said Earley. “I’m not a teenager.”

  “Neither am I,” said Zan. She stood between him and Reed, setting a hand on each of their shoulders, as if she were completing a circuit. “I’d better get rolling.”

  Reed looked devastated. “You’re not going to stay?”

  “Can’t afford to get fired.” She stroked both their shoulders. “So who’s going to kiss me goodnight?”

  Reed darted a quick glance at Earley, then got to his feet and pulled Zan into an open-mouthed kiss, mashing his pelvis against hers.

  The heat rose in Earley’s throat. He stood, looming over them both. Zan twisted towards him and met his kiss hungrily, rising up onto her toes. She drew them both into a three-way embrace. Earley could feel her warm breath at the base of his neck, and Reed’s on his shoulder.

  “Next weekend,” she whispered. And left.

  FIFTEEN

  They woke to the sounds of fierce growling, a loud crash of metal on metal. Earley was out of bed instantly. “What is it?” said Reed, sitting up on the couch.

  Earley reached up to a rack in the roof of the bus and pulled down his rifle. “Where’d you put all that clam trash?”

  “Out back, in the compost,” said Reed, his eyes wide in the moonlight.

  “We’ve got us a bear.” Earley jammed in a cartridge and went outside, feeling his nuts shrivel in the cold air. There wasn’t much light, but he could sense movement behind the shed, in the grove of young hemlocks where he and Reed dumped their perishables. He raised the gun to his shoulder, cocked it and shot.

  The sound echoed off distant cliffs, seeming to hang in the air. He could feel the sharp tang of gunpowder inside his nostrils and throat, and he heard heavy thrashing and footfalls through underbrush. He stood frozen a moment until the sounds stilled, then shivered. He went back in, ducking his head.

  “Did you get it?” Reed asked.

  Earley shook his head, holding his rifle in front of him like a militiaman. “Shot at the sky. I just don’t want her coming back night after night.”

  “What makes you so sure it’s a she?”

  “I’m not. Could have been a young male.”

  Reed was staring at him. His eyes moved to the rifle in Earley’s hands. “Why do you have that?” he asked. “Do you hunt?”

  “Every now and again,” Earley said, hoping Reed wasn’t about to go off on some East Coast liberal tear. “When I’m hungry and broke.” He didn’t mention shooting Dean’s toaster oven. Reed was standing as still as a tree, and Earley suddenly felt very naked. He put the gun into its rack and turned to go back to his bedroom. The shadows of branches and moonlight played over Reed’s body, highlighting the bulge in his underwear. Earley swallowed and edged past him, feeling uncomfortable.

  “Go back to sleep,” he said.

  Reed spent the rest of the night on the couch and woke up complaining that his back hurt. Welcome to my world, thought Earley, who’d had a backache for a decade, no matter what surface he slept on. He couldn’t help thinking Reed’s whining was bogus. And even if Reed was such a wuss that his back hurt from spending one nigh
t on a couch, was this really about that, or did he just want a new mattress so he could screw Zan with some semblance of privacy? Just thinking about it pissed Earley off.

  After she’d left them last night, he and Reed had gone through the usual motions of evening chores—scraping the dishes, discarding the compost, throwing logs into the woodstove and damping down its chimney—but they’d both been wired pretty tight. The bus was so silent that when a fir bough unburdened a fresh load of rain on the roof, they both jumped. Earley was hyperaware of how close Reed was standing, and kept shifting around in the bus’s cramped spaces to keep a slight distance between their two bodies. He still found it hard to believe that they’d shared the same woman and slept side by side, but he couldn’t see any advantage to talking about it. Way he saw it, he’d finally gotten Zan into bed, and the one thing that mattered was getting to do that again and again. If Reed wasn’t trying to punch him out, so much the better; it spared him from having to flatten the guy.

  Earley had never liked getting in fights. He was big enough and strong enough to break someone’s head without even trying, and the bloodlust and gloat that boiled up inside him when he started to punch freaked him out; he could feel himself turning into his old man. Though he had to admit he’d enjoyed slamming Dean in the face when the time was right. He wondered if Dean’s lip had healed. Dean was probably too cheap to go to the ER for stitches, so he might be walking around with a souvenir for the rest of his life, his mouth curled into the permanent sneer of his parting shot, “Loser.”

  Takes one to know one, thought Earley. Dean had loserdom written all over him. He was younger than Earley, just turned twenty-five, but you could already tell he was going to wind up as one of those red-faced, loud middle-aged men at the Shamrock, with a couple divorces under his belt and a gut swelling over it, cursing women for having his number. How could I ever have hired him? Earley wondered. I must have been desperate.

  He glanced over at Reed, who was reading a week-old newspaper, frowning at headlines about the Khmer Rouge and the oil crisis. Different species, thought Earley. He tried to imagine what Reed would be like twenty years from now, and couldn’t come up with a picture. He wouldn’t be cutting up stumps in the woods, that’s for damn sure, or living in some cast-off schoolbus. Sooner or later, he’d come into money; this hardscrabble life was just something to play at, a working-class hat to try on in front of a gilt-edged mirror. Fortunate Son, Earley thought, and the words of the chorus drilled into his head: It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one. He thought of himself twenty years down the road. Christ, he’d be practically fifty. Hard to imagine that he’d still be living like this, and equally hard to imagine he wouldn’t. The usual trappings of fifty—a wife, couple kids, a home with a yard—seemed like somebody else’s life. Probably wind up a few barstools from Dean, he thought. Losers Anonymous.

  He wondered if Zan thought he was a loser. No way, he decided. She’d wept in his arms as she came. She made love to me first, he reminded himself, and made Reed wait for seconds. Not only that, but she grabbed my hand on the beach and told me that she’d been in love since the moment she saw me. Earley was sure that was what Zan had meant. Granted, she might not have used the word “love,” but what else could have led to “We can’t cut out Reed”? I’m in, he thought, looking at Reed again. I’m in solid, and your days are numbered. Maybe Reed already realized where they were heading, and that’s why he hadn’t protested when Zan made her move. It was share her or lose her, and Reed had shut up and accepted his fate. Look at him sitting there reading, thought Earley. He knows.

  “I’m going to bed,” he said, peeling off his undershirt. Reed looked up from his paper, his pale face haloed by lamplight. He seemed to be trying to think of the right thing to say. After a moment he gave up and looked back down, biting his lip as he turned the page.

  “Can I borrow the truck?” Reed asked after work the next day.

  This was a first. “What for?”

  “I want to go check out that Salvation Army. My back is a mess.”

  Whiner, thought Earley. He scooped up Reed’s mallet and froe in one hand, slung them over his shoulder and picked up his chainsaw. “I’ll go with you. We can score some new groceries while we’re in town. I can’t deal with chowder all week.”

  Reed didn’t look pleased, but he nodded. I bet he was planning to sneak up to Zan’s, Earley thought, feeling smug that he’d headed that off at the pass. They bumped down the hill side by side in the truck. As soon as they got within range of the highway, Reed snapped on the radio, grumbling his way down the dial as they gunned towards Forks. “ ‘I Honestly Love You.’ ‘The Way We Were.’ Why is this schlock on FM?”

  “Turn it off, then,” growled Earley, but Reed didn’t let up.

  “This is what people are paying to hear while this country collapses around our ears. ‘The Hustle.’ I mean, shit, why not live in the woods?”

  Earley said nothing. He stubbed out his Drum roll and reached for the dial, just as Reed landed on the Olympia station. “Friend of the Devil” was playing.

  Reed whooped and bounced out of his seat. “Stop the truck.”

  “What?” Earley stared at him.

  “Pull over! Now!”

  Earley did. Reed jumped onto the shoulder while the truck was still moving and knelt at full length, touching his forehead to the ground like a supplicant. “Grisman!” he yodeled. A log truck roared past with a huge blast of wind and an indignant blare on the air horn. Reed leapt up and hurled himself into the jetstream, dancing across the white line as the taillights swooped past. “DAWG IS GOD!” he yelled, waving both hands.

  Earley stepped on the gas pedal, revving the engine. “You’re out of your gourd.”

  “So’s everybody worth knowing.” Reed beamed as he got back in, cranking the volume. “Listen to that mandolin. That is some tasty picking.”

  Earley didn’t bother to tell him that he had no clue which set of twangs was the mandolin. “Shut the damn door,” he said. Reed swung it closed, looping a bungee cord over the handle and threading its hook through the broken hinge.

  “Fixed it,” he smiled. “Did you notice?”

  The air in the Salvation Army smelled of mildew, detergent and Pine-Sol. Earley and Reed walked past racks full of kids’ jackets and wilted shoes to the back of the store, where the furniture was. There was only one mattress, a double with yellowing stains and frayed edges. Reed frowned. “This looks like somebody died of TB on it.”

  “Maybe they did. It’s probably been sterilized.”

  “Pass,” said Reed. “Is there anyplace else?”

  “Sure,” Earley said, “in Seattle, Port Angeles, Sequim . . .”

  Reed nodded. “I can make do on the floor.”

  Earley wondered if Zan could. He certainly hoped not. “Let’s check out the dishes,” he said, stomping towards Housewares. “We need some fine china.”

  There were more choices here. Reed picked up one plate of turquoise Formica and a second of dark brown ceramic with bright yellow flowers. “Wedgwood or Havilland?” he asked.

  “Door Number Two,” said Earley. “That first number looks like it fell off the roof of a HoJo’s.”

  They went to the counter with three of the brown flowered plates. “These are part of a set,” said the thin, dour woman who worked there. “You can’t break up sets.”

  “We only need three,” Earley said.

  “It’s a set of eight plates.”

  “We don’t know eight people,” said Reed. “Besides, how do you know there isn’t some family of five out there somewhere who doesn’t want these three?”

  “I won’t break a set,” said the woman, her nostrils pinched.

  “Oh come on, live a little,” said Reed, leaning forward.

  “Forget it,” said Earley. “Who cares about plates?”

  “I do,” said Reed. “I care about everything.” He turned back to the woman at the counter. “Do you take donations?”


  She looked suspicious. “Why?”

  “I’ll take the set.” Reed went back and returned with the other five plates, setting them onto the counter. The woman punched register buttons, glad to be rid of them.

  “That’ll be six dollars and forty-four cents.”

  “Thank you,” said Reed. He gave her the money, handed three of the plates to Earley and turned to go.

  “What about these?” the woman demanded, pointing at the other five plates.

  “Donation,” said Reed. “Take it off of my taxes.”

  “You don’t actually pay taxes, do you?” asked Earley as they drove to the store.

  “Good question,” said Reed.

  “ ’Cause we’re way off the books. Gillies’ mill is cash only, and not much of that. Unless you’ve got some trust fund back home to report.”

  Reed looked out the window. Bull’s-eye. What the fuck was he doing here anyway, breaking his balls in the rain for a couple of nickels, when he had a stretch limo parked at the curb? He claimed he’d come up to Forks looking for Zan, but he hadn’t done much about staying with her when he found her— if Earley hadn’t just happened to need a new splitter, Reed would have been off to Alaska that same afternoon, with his thumb in the air like a tramp. What the hell was his problem? Spoiled brat, Earley thought, doesn’t know when he’s got it good. Well, at least he can pay for the groceries.

  “What did you say your old man does for bucks?” Earley knew he was picking a scab, but he couldn’t resist. Reed glared at him.

  “What do you care?”

  “Is it a secret?”

  “Of course not, it just doesn’t make any difference,” said Reed. “He’s a judge. Ran for Congress last year and lost.”

  Congress, for Christ’s sake. “You vote for him?”

  “He’s a Republican,” Reed said dismissively. “What does your father do?”