Clearcut

by Nina Shengold

  “Works at a paper mill. If he’s still breathing.”

  “Paper?” Reed lifted his eyebrows. “And you cut up trees?”

  “It’s a living,” said Earley. “You cut up trees too, at least this week.”

  Reed stared at him. “This week?”

  “Come on, man, you’re halfway through college. You’re not going to stick with a shit job like this and you know it.”

  “Are you going to fire me?”

  “Why would I do that?” said Earley.

  “Got me,” said Reed, his voice tight and bitter. He reached for the radio dial.

  Earley laid his hand over it. “Leave it off.”

  Reed opened his mouth to say something, but bit it back. Go on, thought Earley, glancing over at him with those damn flowered plates on his lap, pick a fight with me. Show me what you’ve got for balls. Last night he’d felt sorry for Reed, been relieved not to get in a mix with the guy. Now he was itching to pop him one. What had Reed done to get under his skin like this? Nothing, he thought; Reed’s just being himself. And I want to kill him.

  It was going to be like this all week, Earley bet. Both of them knew Zan was coming on Friday, and who she would sleep with was anyone’s guess. It was hard to believe they’d all wind up in the same bed again, even if Reed didn’t manage to scare up a comfortable mattress. Earley didn’t want to share Zan; he wanted her all to himself. Reed knew it, too—that was why he was sulking about getting fired. Watch your back, white boy, thought Earley. I’ll pull her right out from under you.

  They parked at the FoodMart and did a quick shop. Earley picked up a couple of steaks, breakfast sausage, Coke, bean sprouts, three six-packs. Reed paid with a traveler’s check. They stopped at the post office and, at Reed’s insistence, the library. When they got back in the truck, Earley clicked on the radio.

  Reed looked at him. “I thought you didn’t want music.”

  “I changed my mind.” Earley put on a country station. They listened to “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights,” then “Daydreams About Night Things.”

  “It’s always the same three chords,” said Reed.

  “So?”

  “So nothing. It’s just how it is. That’s why you can sing along with a country song you’ve never heard before.”

  “How come you quit playing music?” Earley turned his head, looking right at him. Reed’s eyes went opaque. Muscles twitched in his jaw.

  “Wasn’t good enough.”

  “Sounded damn good to me.”

  “Maybe I didn’t quit. Maybe I’m resting.”

  “You’re fucking your hands up for sure.”

  “They’re my hands.” Reed clicked the radio onto a different station.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I can’t take John Denver.”

  “I like this song.”

  “Fine,” snapped Reed, clicking it back. “He’s all yours.” He stared out the window, his chin on his fist. Earley turned up the volume. They were approaching the turnoff for Bogachiel campground. Earley could have used a good shower, but he didn’t want to get naked with Reed after sharing a bed with the guy. This was all just too strange for a Georgia boy. People were fooling around in all sorts of weird combinations these days, but that wife-swapping Plato’s Retreat stuff seemed utterly foreign to Earley, not just kinky but kind of pathetic. If you knew how to do the real deal, if you really made love to a woman, there was no need to be messing with extras. He wondered what his brother Darrell would say if he found out that Earley had been in a three-way. There’d been a pair of ash-blonde twins in the trailer park down by the swamp when they were teenagers, and Darrell and Earley had jerked off to whispered fantasies about fucking them both in the same bed, but Sueleen and Trish were both girls. That was Playboy material. Darrell would freak at him sharing his futon with Reed.

  Darrell had always had kind of a wild side—he’d ridden a Harley and gone with black hookers—but when he got discharged from ’Nam with two-thirds of his arm, he had married a girl from church, popped out three babies and settled down flat as a board. He thought Earley was nuts. Nuts to leave Waycross, nuts to move north, nuts to live out in the woods like some damn hippie scum. His one visit to Forks had been a disaster, and they’d dropped out of touch, except for a two-year-old Christmas card photo of Darrell’s three girls, his name signed in his wife’s schoolteacherish writing. I miss him, thought Earley. I miss my brat brother.

  He looked back at Reed, who was younger than Darrell by three or four years, but could otherwise pass for a sort of kid brother. Earley had broken him in, taught Reed all he knew about woods work. They’d moved a few tons of raw cedar in all sorts of weather and hung out for long, easy hours, drinking beer, playing music, cracking each other up, fixing dinner together or—this was rarest and best—doing nothing at all, just enjoying the fact that the other was there, without needing to say a damn thing. I don’t want to lose that, thought Earley. I want him and Zan.

  It sounded impossible, but what was the obstacle, really? Reed wanted the same thing as he did, he’d swear to it. Zan wanted them both. Or did she? Earley had to admit that he didn’t have much of a clue what Zan wanted. She was a glorious mystery, like a macaw swooping down on a feeder of sparrows. He couldn’t imagine how she had wound up in these rain-soaked woods, breaking her back in anonymous labor, as far off the map as a person could get. It was almost as if she was trying to lose herself. What was she running from, so hard and fast?

  Just be grateful, he thought, turning off the main highway and onto the spur that led up to the blue bus. You’ll see her on Friday.

  SIXTEEN

  Earley stood on the dock next to Reed and Zan, watching the Winslow ferry slide into its slip with a backwash of engines. It slammed into the barnacle-crusted wood pilings, which creaked and groaned as if they would collapse.

  They were on their way to Seattle to buy Reed a mattress. They could have found one in Sequim or Port Angeles, closer to home, but all three of them liked the idea of taking a road trip. They’d spent Friday night together on Earley’s big futon, and as Zan and Reed thrashed and panted beside him—she’d taken Reed first, this time—Earley had decided that letting Reed have his own bed wasn’t such a bad thing after all. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind now that Zan would continue to sleep with them both, and if Reed had a place to make love to her one on one, well, so would he.

  Not that he minded as much as he would have imagined. In fact, Earley had to admit that their lovemaking turned him on. It was like watching a porn flick that stroked all five senses. Even when he closed his eyes, he could hear, smell and practically taste their two bodies mating, could feel the occasional lingering brush of an arm or leg over his skin. By the time Zan was ready for Earley, he felt like an iron bar. He slid in deep and then nearly withdrew, over and over until she was frothing beneath him, willing to go wherever he took her, all his. When he woke after midnight to find Zan curled into his chest, her cheek resting over his heartbeat, with one leg tossed carelessly over Reed’s ankles, he knew it for certain: she wanted them both, but she wanted him more. The least he could do for poor Reed was to get him a bed.

  The ferryman lowered the ramp, and dozens of people streamed off the ferry. Like chum salmon spawning, thought Earley, feeling his height as the crowd eddied past him. He laid one hand on Zan’s shoulders and the other on Reed’s. “Let’s go,” he said. They dashed through the aisles between tam vinyl benches and burst through the doors to the upper deck railing. The Puget Sound fanned out before them, with the rolling green humps of the San Juan Islands off to the north and the high Cascades, crinkled and snow-covered, rising behind.

  It was a car ferry, but they were going on foot to save money. They had stashed Earley’s truck in the parking lot of the Pen-tangle Cafe, where they’d chowed down on pitas and listened to three local women playing a jazz brunch. The drummer was black and athletic, the pianist petite with a blonde frizz of hair, and the flutist so pregnant she l
ooked like her water might break any minute. Earley watched her sway, mesmerized. “That takes some guts,” said Reed. “Shame she can’t play better.”

  “They sound pretty decent to me.” Earley bit off a loose chunk of falafel, licking the hummus that stuck in his beard.

  “C minus. The drummer’s got half a right hand, and that piano chick owns some Thelonious Monk records. The babe with the belly should go back to her high school marching band,” Reed said. “What time is our ferry?”

  “We’ll make it,” said Zan, glancing up at a clock screened by spider plants. “You sure you don’t want to drive onto the car deck? What’ll we do with the mattress?”

  “Carry it on,” Earley said. “We can pick it up on our way out of town.” He hadn’t been to Seattle in a few years, but he thought he remembered a couple of department stores near the ferry dock. No way was he paying to transport his truck, or driving in big-city traffic. The mattress was just an excuse; the point was to have an adventure.

  They’d started the day in high spirits, stopping for hot homemade pie in a roadside joint just north of Forks and enjoying the waitress’s growing confusion as Zan nuzzled a different partner each time she came over to top off their coffees. They’d sped past the teal green waters of Crescent Lake and stopped for an impromptu skinny-dip in a fern-covered hot spring that Earley knew, just east of Marymere Falls. They were high as three kites, splashing each other and laughing at everything anyone said. Reed climbed up the cliffs and cannonballed right between Earley and Zan, whooping and sending up waves of hot spray. Earley was filled with a spiraling joy he could barely contain. It was rare enough to feel this kind of connection with one other person, but what were the odds against three people being so happy together? Blessed, he thought. We just got blessed.

  The ferry was moving away from the dock. It churned past a tidy marina, steaming out into the channel. Earley stared out at the manicured beachfront homes that lined Bainbridge Island, each with its own private dock. The wind whipped through Zan’s and Reed’s hair as the boat picked up speed. “Keep an eye out for killer whales,” Earley said. “They like to swim around ferries.”

  “We used to whale-watch off the Vineyard,” said Reed, watching a sailboat yaw past them. “That sloop needs a spinnaker, big time.”

  “Hey, Earley,” Zan pointed. Two roofers were clambering over the tar-paper roof of a newly built house, nailing up cedar shakes. “You might have cut those.”

  “I might indeed,” Earley said. “Looks like they found a good home.” It was a two-story clapboard with classic proportions, a skylight or two and a wraparound deck overlooking the water. The builders had left a nice rim of young hemlocks around the newly seeded lawn. Lawyer with kids, he thought, two-income couple. Gas grill on the deck and a golden retriever. The Normals.

  “I’m freezing.” Zan shivered. “Let’s go inside.”

  “There’s a snack bar.” Reed looked up at Earley. “I’ll get you both coffee.”

  Earley shook his head. “I’m fine where I am.”

  Reed slipped his arm around Zan as they headed inside. Earley heard her laugh at something Reed said and wondered if it was a crack about him. He leaned over the green guardrail, watching the house and its roofers recede. He’d spent half his life cutting wood and he’d never lived in a home that was made of it. There was a cleared site near his bus, overlooking the waterfall, where he dreamed about building a cabin someday. If he ever had someone to build it for. He thought about Robbo, bringing his paycheck back home to his wife and new baby, and wondered if he’d ever have that. Not likely, he thought, not the way things were heading. Margie Walkonis had asked him why he didn’t have a girl of his own, and what had he done? Switched from one who was married to one who was sleeping with two guys at once.

  Well, fine. Some people sank roots in the ground and some didn’t. It wasn’t like marriage was such a great thing; take a look at his parents. Earley figured that anything he carved out in this life would be better than what he’d been dealt. At least there was nobody screaming at him every minute or whupping his butt. He’d gotten out. He was his own man. He headed inside and let Reed buy him coffee.

  Earley couldn’t believe how bizarre the Seattle waterfront seemed to his eyes, like an outpost on some distant planet. Safety-orange monster cranes hunched over shipping containers and tankers. The Space Needle stuck up between glass-front skyscrapers and crisscrossing highways. Cars zipped back and forth on the Alaskan Way Viaduct to a pounding soundtrack of backhoes, jackhammers and diesel roar echoing off the cement. As they followed the crowd off the ferry, alongside the crush of exiting cars, Earley fought back the urge to press both hands over his ears. How could anyone in his right mind live with so much commotion? He reminded himself that he’d lived in Atlanta for years before drifting up north, that this level of din had seemed normal to him. He guessed it was like walking into the Cedar on Friday night after a week in the woods—or like using a chainsaw. You noticed the noise for a while, then you didn’t. Some switch in your brain simply turned off, or went into overdrive.

  Zan and Reed seemed to have snapped into city mode, walking faster and talking in loud, brassy voices, excited and flirty, like kids on a date. Earley slouched in their wake, feeling out of place. “Let’s get the bed taken care of and then we can cruise,” said Reed. “Where are those stores you were talking about?”

  Earley couldn’t tell one city block from another, but after a few false starts, they found a department store that sold furniture. They rode an escalator to the third floor, passing rows of washing machines, gas ranges and vacuums till they found the beds.

  “May I help you?” A trim salesman with a combed mustache appeared out of nowhere as Reed read a tag. He wore glasses and spoke with a slight air of challenge, as if the three people before him looked likely to shoplift a Castro Convertible.

  “We want a mattress,” said Reed.

  “What size?” asked the salesman.

  “Double,” said Reed at the same time that Earley said, “Twin.” The salesman looked from one to the other.

  “You can’t fit a double behind that couch,” said Earley.

  “So let’s move the couch.”

  “To where?”

  “Anywhere,” Reed said. “I want a double.”

  “Twin.”

  “Double,” said Zan. “Reed’s buying it.”

  “Fine,” Earley said. “He can take it away in his backpack.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Reed demanded.

  “It’s my bus.”

  “It’s my bed.”

  “Do you folks need a minute?” the salesman asked.

  “No,” said Reed. “I want a firm double mattress. Got one that fits in a backpack?”

  The salesman’s brow wrinkled. “Our camping department might have some inflatables.”

  “Bingo,” said Reed. “I can raft down the Hoh River when Earley gets rid of me.”

  “Fuck it,” said Earley. “Just buy your damn double. We’ll fit it in somehow.”

  “You bet we will.” Zan slung her arm around Reed.

  Oh, so now I’m in the doghouse, thought Earley. That’s great. That’s just great. “I’ll meet you outside,” he growled, turning before Reed could argue. He clumped through the Housewares department and circled around to the down escalator, riding past floors of men’s suits and cosmetics. A blonde who was spritzing after-shave samples stepped towards him, smiling, took one look at Earley’s expression and stepped back without a word. He stomped past a wall of TV sets, all playing a promo for Charlie’s Angels with three girls in pantsuits whipping hair over their shoulders as they posed with guns. The electric doors swung open for him, and he went outside, gulping the sour, gritty air like a drowning man.

  The front of the store had window displays full of mannequins in prom gowns, shag wigs and pastel tuxedos. Earley slumped on a lamppost and rolled up a smoke. The smell of the traffic was making his head hurt. Why had he thought this
was going to be fun? He would have been happy to spend the whole day at that hot spring.

  He squinted out at the harbor and wondered why he’d been so pissy with Reed. Especially in front of Zan. He didn’t give all that much of a damn how the mattress would fit. The couch was a piece of junk anyway; it could rot in the rain for all Earley cared. It was more about who got to make the decisions. And it was his bus. One alpha dog to a pack, he thought. That’s how it works.

  Zan came out first. “How could you do that to him?” she demanded.

  Earley did not feel like hashing this out. “All I said was the bus is too small.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe it is. Maybe we both ought to leave you alone.”

  Earley looked at her, stunned. That “we” was a poison dart. With one syllable, Zan had redrawn the lines: two of us, one of you. He stared at his boots. He’d never known how to respond when a woman got on him for being a jerk. Some guys could talk their way out of this stuff; he just sank. I can’t work things out with one other person, he thought, forget about two. It was simpler to live in the woods by himself and avoid all this crap, stick to what he could handle.

  Simpler, but not what he wanted. Earley imagined himself waking up in his bus every morning and eating his own lousy cooking in silence, driving up to the clearcut alone, without Reed by his side, sinking into bed every night with no dreams about Zan, no chance of them making love ever again. I can’t give this up, he thought. No.

  He looked over at Zan. She was one of those women who looked even sexier when she was angry, her dark eyes on fire. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

  She softened at once. “This is hard on him, Earley. Reed isn’t blind. He’s got to know what’s going on with us.”

  There it was again. Us. Only this time, she’d made Earley part of the two, not the one. “I don’t know what’s going on with us,” Earley said.

  Zan looked as if he had hit her. It was just a split second, but Earley could tell he had touched a raw nerve.

  “If you don’t know,” she said, “then it’s not going on. My mistake.” She looked out at the harbor, her mouth a straight line. What was she trying to tell him? That she was in love with him too? Then why the hell didn’t she come out and speak the words outright, so they could both celebrate? Why was she still hanging on to Reed, taking his part against Earley, insisting that Reed get a mattress with room for two? Earley tried to remember that only a few hours ago he had felt blessed by their threesome. My head’s going to burst, he thought. I’m going to splatter my brain cells all over that window of tuxes. I’ve got to get out of this stinking city.