The next morning wasn’t much better. Reed went to the gorge for another cold shower. He came out of the woods with his hair dripping wet, singing “Midnight Train to Georgia,” stopping short when he saw Earley loading the truck.
They drove up to the clearcut without a word. Reed drummed on his knees, then glanced over at Earley to see if it bugged him. Earley turned on the wipers. It wasn’t quite raining, but banks of low clouds were hung up on the mountainside, shredding through treetops like cotton wool. They drove in and out of dense patches of cloud cover, fogging the view. Earley reached into his pouch for a smoke he’d rolled, fumbling with one hand to twist the ends tighter and light it. Reed moved to help him, but drew back before their hands touched. Good instinct, thought Earley. I’d flatten you.
Earley didn’t look back as he strode up the mountain’s bald face, clambering over clots of lopped branches, mudslides and scree. No more holding back, he thought; keep up or drop.
They were working so high up the mountain that it wasn’t worth the time it took getting there. I’ve got to order that flyout, vowed Earley. Next time he went into town he’d swing by Gillies’ mill and set up a copter date with Clay Johannsen. They’d piled enough cedar to cover the cost three times over. But there were a couple of oldgrowth stumps high on the ridge that Earley wanted to tackle first, real old men of the forest, so broad that he could have parked his truck on them if he could have gotten it up the hill. Those cedars had been there since men fought in armor. They might have topped two hundred feet. Not anymore, Earley thought. Now they’re somebody’s deck.
He got to the first of the giants and revved up his Husqy. There was a lot of heartrot, but plenty to salvage if he cut around the spault. Reed waited in silence as Earley bent over, spraying them both with a cinnamon dusting of cedar as he carved the first big block out of the stump. When he was finished, Reed lifted the block out, still warm from the saw blade. He carried it to an adjacent stump, jammed the splitting wedge into the soft wood and hefted his sledgehammer.
They worked all morning without a break, decimating the stump and unearthing a big log behind it that might yield a couple of cords’ worth of shakebolts in spite of the rot. Earley wanted to wear Reed down, like he had when they first started working together. It annoyed him that Reed could keep up with him now. He was sweating in spite of the drizzle. He peeled off his wool shirt and set it on top of a log, working in his damp undershirt. He was down to the heart of the tree. The wood had changed color, the copper tones turning the dry red of sandstone. Earley nosed his blade into the heartwood, burning in hard. The saw sputtered, sending up plumes of black smoke. “Shit,” he said, cutting the engine.
Reed looked concerned. “Did you run out of gas?”
“Bar oil,” said Earley, cursing himself for forgetting to refill the reservoir. He could smell the thick fumes, and the metal cap was hot enough to burn his fingers. Why hadn’t he noticed it sooner? He’d run it to sludge.
“Is the can in the back of the truck? I’ll go down if you want.”
Earley shook his head. He could picture the lubricant can right where he’d left it, on the hood of the bus with their lunch. If you hadn’t been singing that goddamn song, he thought, I would’ve gotten the truck packed up right. “Left it back home,” he said, turning his back on Reed as he headed downhill by himself.
Earley twisted the steering wheel, swerving around a deep puddle that he hadn’t noticed that morning. This road’s getting worse every day, he thought, washboard and mud. He rounded a tight curve and slammed on the brake. He was nose to nose with a heavy black truck. Nobody drove on his access road, ever. Earley stared through the glare on the windshield and stiffened. The driver was Harlan Walkonis. Had Margie said something? Had Amber?
Earley’s fists clenched and opened like heart muscles. There was a hunting rifle on the rack right behind Harlan’s head. Earley reached backwards and unsnapped the sheath of the knife on his belt, just in case.
Harlan got out of his idling truck, reaching backwards to hitch up his pants. He probably weighed more than Earley, but he had the flushed, suety look of somebody who sat in a truck cab all day and a barstool all night. His eyes had a permanent squint, under tan brows that bristled like birds’ nests. Earley pushed open his door and unfolded himself to his full six foot five.
Harlan peered at him. “Earl Ritter?”
Earley gave a nod, waiting for more.
“Do you own that trashed-out blue school bus a couple miles up?”
That wasn’t the question that Earley expected from someone whose wife he’d been fucking. “What if I do?”
Harlan drew back his lip in a sneer. “Then you better get ready to drive it away, or we’ll push it aside with a Cat. It’s on Royalton land.”
TWENTY
Reed was enraged. ”They can’t get away with that!”
“Who’s gonna stop them?” said Earley, plunking the oil can on top of the stump. “A couple of shake-rats who don’t have a pot to piss in, squatting on Royalton Timber’s front yard? They don’t give a shit about people like us. All they want is the timber sale.”
“Two thousand acres of clearcutting? That’s going to destroy the whole forest. Not just where we live.”
“The Forest Service sold Royalton logging and access road rights to the parcel above us,” said Earley. “They already own where I live. They can do what they want.”
“And you’re just going to lie down and take it?” Reed’s voice was indignant.
“I’m gonna put oil in my chainsaw and cut up the rest of this log,” Earley said. “Gonna earn my damn living, like always.” He unscrewed the cap of the oil tank and jammed in a funnel, pouring the black liquid into his chainsaw.
Reed folded his arms. “And when the first bulldozer rolls up our driveway—”
“My bus has four wheels. I’ll move on when I have to.” Reed’s eyes registered Earley’s shift from “our” to “my,” but he didn’t let up.
“It’s not a done deal yet,” he said. “We can fight this.”
“How?” Earley snapped. “Are you going to call up your daddy the judge? Maybe he can buy two thousand acres. Little dowry for you and Zan.”
“Fuck you, Earley. You don’t know the first thing about me.” Reed grabbed his sledgehammer and stamped off. He’s pissed at me, Earley thought. Good.
He yanked back the ripcord and nosed his saw into the giant log’s heartwood, sending up twin sprays of brick-red dust. So much for that cabin with sixteen-foot ceilings, he thought. I’m going to be stuck in some portable can for the rest of my life. I’ll never have anything that I can call my own. People like Reed thought they had the power to change things; Earley knew all too well it was hopeless. The world gave you nothing to work with except your own body. That was all you could count on. Behind him, Reed cried out in pain.
Earley swiveled fast, choking his saw. Reed was doubled in agony, clutching his leg. “Shit, man. Oh, man.” He was breathing hard.
“You okay?” Earley asked idiotically. Reed shook his head. “What’d you do, drop the wedge on your foot?”
“Hit my ankle,” said Reed through clenched teeth. “With the hammer. I felt something crack.”
Earley imagined the force of an eight-pound sledgehammer, swinging down in an arc from high over Reed’s head to his anklebone. He sucked in air. “Let’s get you off it.” He guided Reed onto the chopping block, letting his injured foot drag in its boot. He gave Reed his canteen and made him take a drink. “Just sit still for a minute.”
Reed nodded and drank some more water, splashing it over his chin. His face was flushed. “Shit,” he said, blinking back tears.
“Can you move it at all?”
Reed screwed up his face with the effort. “Not up and down,” he said. “There’s about five different bones that slide over each other right there at the ankle. I fucked up bad, Earley. I’m fucked.”
“Okay,” Earley said, thinking hard. “Let’s leave on your boot,
that’ll help hold it still. I’ll fake up a splint and we’ll get you on down to the truck, okay, buddy?” Reed nodded. Earley picked up the hammer in one hand, the wedge in the other, and knocked off a couple of splits from a shake bolt in two swift moves.
“I couldn’t do that in a million years,” Reed said. His voice sounded broken.
“What?” Earley didn’t know what he was talking about.
“You’re made for this work. I never will be.”
“There’s nothing so great about cutting up shakes,” Earley said. “It’s just work.” He scooped up his wool shirt and knelt next to Reed, using its sleeves to bind the two wood splits on either side of Reed’s ankle.
“That ought to get you downhill at least. Ready to try it?” Reed nodded. Earley got behind him and hoisted him into a standing position. “How’s that?”
“I can make it,” said Reed. “What about the tools?”
“Leave ’em. I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“Your Husqy?”
“I’m taking that.” Earley picked up the saw by its handle and offered his free arm to Reed. “Come on, lean on me.”
Reed did. They set off at a slow hobble. From the look on Reed’s face, Earley knew every step was excruciating. He wondered if he should say something about how they’d fought, and decided against it. This wasn’t his fault. He looked down at the miniature roof of his truck, at the vertical acres of slash piles and stumpage between them and it. What the hell was he thinking of, working so high? He remembered that time he’d fallen on top of his chainsaw and gashed his leg. His partner back then was a Makah Indian, Leroy Tatoosh, who had driven a jeep for a medical unit in ’Nam. Leroy’s quick thinking had saved Earley’s ass, but if they’d been working this high on the mountaintop, he would have bled to death. Flyout, he thought. I’ll call Clay from the hospital.
“I’ve totaled this ankle before,” Reed said, teeth gritted. “Tore a ligament running a marathon.”
Earley winced. “Ouch.”
“I finished,” said Reed. “Four hours and ten. I just thought it was shin splints.”
“Tough guy,” said Earley.
“Not tough. Just stubborn.”
“Same difference.”
They’d come to the edge of a gully carved out by a fork of Suhammish Creek. No way is Reed going to get down that ravine, Earley thought. He looked left and right for an easier crossing. The creek cut a deep gash through the clearcut. The rains and erosion had choked it with tangles of branches, its steep sides precipitous. Reed set one foot onto the edge. Earley stopped him. “Hang on. I’ll carry you down.”
“I can make it.”
“You fall down on that foot, you’ll be roadkill,” said Earley. “Take off your shirt.”
Reed looked at him. “Why?”
“Gonna backpack my saw.”
Reed unbuttoned his red chamois workshirt, the L.L. Bean number that had tie-dyed their clothes in the washing machine. He stood pale and thin in his T-shirt as Earley threaded a sleeve through his chainsaw handle and slung it across his back, tying the sleeves in a knot on his shoulder. He bent down next to Reed.
“Left arm over my shoulder,” he said. “I’ll try not to hurt your leg. Ready?”
Reed nodded, wincing as Earley slid one arm behind his knees, testing their bend. Earley paused for a moment, then stood up straight, swinging Reed’s broken body up into his arms, like a bride crossing over the threshold.
“Codeine,” said Reed. “This shit’s better than Quaaludes.” He was sprawled on the couch with his leg propped on cushions. Earley had driven him back from the local emergency room, where a tired-looking doctor had squinted at X-rays and told Reed he’d fractured some bone; Earley couldn’t remember the name. A younger doctor had wrapped Reed’s ankle in plaster of paris and sent him back home with a rubber-tipped crutch and a fistful of painkillers.
“I was never a ’Lude man myself,” Earley said. “I like drugs you can smoke.”
“Help yourself,” said Reed, nodding his head towards the ashtray that sat on the low trunk between them. Earley picked up the joint they’d been sharing and reached over to Reed’s bedside table for matches. Reed was reading a new book called Riprap and Other Poems. It was sitting on top of his instrument case.
“You know, you haven’t played your mandolin once,” Earley said.
“You haven’t used your knife.”
Earley stepped into the kitchen and took out his scrimshaw knife. He set an apple on top of the trunk table, halved it and speared a chunk. “Your turn.”
Reed crunched up the apple and swallowed. “All right,” he said. Earley stretched backwards and handed the instrument case to him.
Reed took out the mandolin, tuning its paired strings. “There’s only one problem. I’m too stoned to play straight.”
“Didn’t stop Hendrix,” said Earley.
“Yes it did. Big time.”
“Oh, that,” Earley said, relighting the roach.
“Jimi. Janis. Jim Morrison. End of an era.”
“They were all younger than I am,” said Earley. He took a deep toke, grateful the topic was music, not Royalton’s timber sale.
“When is your birthday?”
Earley held the smoke in his lungs for a long time before he exhaled and said, “Sometime next week, I think.”
“Hell, boy, how deep in the Okefenokee did you grow up? Don’t you even know when your birthday is?”
“Sixth of May. I don’t know what today is.”
“The seventh.”
Earley stared at him. “You’re shitting me.”
“No, man, I’m telling you true.”
“I’m thirty?”
“Damn straight. Happy birthday.”
Earley couldn’t believe it. Thirty years old. He had thought that would bother the hell out of him, and here it had come and gone by without him even noticing. These milestones, these boundaries that seemed so significant, just didn’t matter that much when you got right up next to them. It was all fluid. He took another deep drag on the roach, which was charring his fingers, and felt a sensation that rose through his scalp like lava. The room seemed to swim in a haze of warmth. The hurricane lamp at the edge of the room sent out pulses of light, like a lighthouse.
Reed tightened the last string and plucked it. “So what do you want to hear?”
“Play me that song again.”
“What song?”
“The one that you played in the store.” Earley could still hear the gypsyish wail of the tune. It had given him goosebumps.
“I don’t remember it. I was just riffing.”
“You made that up?”
“Yeah.” Reed shrugged, as if it were no big deal.
“Make up something else. Something for me.”
Reed looked at him. His eyes looked too bright in the lamplight. “All right,” he said softly. Then he turned his head to one side, closed his eyes and began to play.
Earley leaned back as Reed’s fingers slid over the fretboard, now fast, now dreamlike and wavery, coaxing a tune from the strings. The notes clustered and swam, swirling around them like eddies, like meltwater. Reed’s lips parted, moving a little, as if he were making the strings vibrate with his own breath. I am really deep stoned, Earley thought. I feel golden. Like honey.
He gazed at the back of Reed’s neck as he bent over his mandolin, at the pale, jutting knobs of his spine, lamplight catching the fine downy hairs like a halo. Earley’s hand floated up from his lap and hovered in space for a moment. Then his fingertips came to a rest on Reed’s nape, at the base of his ponytail. Reed stiffened at once. He stopped playing.
“Don’t mess with me, Earley,” he said in a choked voice.
“I’m not,” Earley said. His fingers moved softly over the back of Reed’s neck. What am I doing? he thought. He could feel Reed’s pulse throbbing, the warmth of his skin turning gritty with stubble. He’s a guy, Earley thought, this is weirder than hell. But he didn’t stop touching
him.
Reed put down his mandolin and turned towards him. The look in his eyes was like nothing that Earley had ever seen. It was love, pure and simple, but something more, something ashamed of itself and relieved and stark naked and painfully new. This is it, said Reed’s eyes. This is what I’ve been trying to tell you.
“Earley,” he whispered. And kissed him. Earley was shocked by the warmth of his lips, that they felt just the same as a woman’s. His response was instinctive: he kissed back the mouth that was kissing his own. His hand slid around Reed’s waist. Christ, he thought, feeling dizzy. I can’t let this happen.
Reed pulled away from him, trembling. “I can’t believe this.”
“I’m having some trouble myself,” Earley said.
“I’ve wanted to do that for so long.”
“You have?” Earley looked at him, wary.
Reed gave a small nod. “Does that freak you out?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Me too.” Reed laid his palm onto Earley’s chest, right where the fine hairs curled up from the scoop of his undershirt. Earley could feel his heart pounding. This was a trail that led over a cliff. He lifted Reed’s hand off and handed it back to him. “Look, man, it’s not like I’m . . . I don’t know why I . . .”
Reed’s jaw set. He looked down at the table and nodded. “We’re both pretty high,” he said in a flat voice, as if that would let them both off the hook.
“No hard feelings.”
“No feelings at all,” said Reed. “That’s what the codeine is for.” He looked so miserable that Earley wanted to hug him, but he was afraid it would just make things worse. When he’d carried Reed down from the scene of the accident, there’d been no question of what he should do, or what anything meant. He’d taken Reed into his arms as if it were the most natural thing in the world for men to take care of each other. A couple of minutes ago he had reached for Reed’s neck with the same tender impulse; he’d kissed Reed right back. I want to touch him right now, Earley realized, feeling a hot pulse of danger. He turned his head slightly to look at Reed’s profile, the gold fringe of lashes veiling his eyes, the taut cords that twitched in his jawline.
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