Clearcut

by Nina Shengold

  I want you. Earley tried out the words silently, feeling the roof of his mouth go dry. There would be no turning back this time, no second step on the brakes. Did he mean it, or was he just horny, stoned, lonely? I want you, he thought again, feeling the room pulsate. Jesus.

  Reed turned, just as if he had heard Earley say it out loud. He reached out for Earley’s hand, and when Earley didn’t withdraw it, Reed bent down and kissed his fingertips, one by one, the same way that Zan had kissed his in the waterfall gorge. Earley remembered the desolation he’d felt as he watched from the edge of the cliff. Why the fuck not? he thought, feeling the warmth of Reed’s breath on his skin.

  He gathered Reed into a clumsy hug, drawing him closer. He was so much taller that Reed’s face nestled into the base of his throat. Earley rested his lips on top of Reed’s head, inhaling the thick musk of cedar dust, woodsmoke and work sweat that both of them shared. He could hear his own heartbeat. He hadn’t felt like this since he was thirteen, when touching a girl was charged with equal parts peril and thrill, like a skydive. If Reed were a girl, Earley thought, I’d be on him like gravy on beef.

  He slid his hand down Reed’s back. “How’s your leg?” he said.

  “What leg?” said Reed.

  “Want to go and lie down?”

  Reed didn’t hesitate. “Yeah,” he said shakily. “Yes, I do.” He swung his hurt leg off the couch. Earley helped him get up. Reed leaned up against him, hobbling towards the orange curtain. Earley drew it back.

  There was his futon, sheets twisted as usual, bathed in blue moonlight. They stood for a beat staring down at it. Then they turned towards each other, madly unbuttoning and yanking off layers until they stood bare-chested in their jeans.

  Reed twined his arms around Earley. There was no air space between their two chests, no breasts to cushion the contact. Their skins seemed to generate heat. Earley could feel himself sweating. His blood seemed to pulse with the flickering glow of the hurricane lamp. I’m getting a hard-on, he realized, and then, with a jolt: so is Reed. He took a step back. “Should I put on some music?” he asked.

  “I don’t need a damn thing,” said Reed. “Except maybe your knife.” Earley must have looked startled; Reed actually smiled.

  “I don’t think my jeans will fit over this cast,” he said. Earley nodded, his heart pounding too fast. He imagined sliding his knife up the leg of Reed’s blue jeans and slitting the fabric off him like opening an oyster. It turned him on.

  He wrapped his arms around Reed’s back, lowering him to the mattress. He’d meant to get up and go back for his knife, but Reed wouldn’t let go. He pulled Earley on top of his body, angling his cast to one side so that Earley was straddling his unbroken leg. Their mouths found each other, tongues twining like lovers. Earley could feel his body responding, some primitive part of his brain taking hold. And then he felt Reed’s hand unzipping his jeans.

  “Okay?” Reed whispered. Earley didn’t answer. His breath caught as Reed’s fingers took hold of his cock.

  Earley closed his eyes. The glow of the hurricane lamp seemed to pulsate inside his eyelids. The room swirled to the rhythm of Reed’s moving hand. A whirlwind of images flew past him, too fast to grasp: Zan’s red dress. Her mouth. Margie’s waterbed. Reed and Zan fucking. His brother. Zan’s nipples. Zan clutching his back. Zan convulsing in ecstasy, bringing him with her. Zan weeping against his chest.

  Zan.

  Earley let out a low animal moan. He could feel something pressing against his thigh, hard and insistent. Reed’s penis, he realized, straining against the blue denim. Earley’s own inner pressure rose with it, volcanic.

  God help me, he thought as he came.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Earley woke up with Reed’s face on his chest. Christ, he thought. Now what? His mind was still bleary from smoking so much, but it didn’t take too many brain cells to realize that he’d landed himself in a wide world of trouble. At least I’ve still got my pants on, he thought, as if that would absolve him of something.

  Reed sighed in his sleep. What the hell am I going to do with this guy? Earley wondered. He’s going to be useless for work with that leg, and the fucker is snoring on top of my nipple. He fought back the urge to shove Reed away; he wanted to get out of bed without waking him.

  Earley reached for a pillow, then sidled away from Reed, carefully wedging the pillow where he had just been. He was most of the way off the futon when Reed flopped over suddenly, flinging his arm across Earley’s hip. Earley pushed it away without thinking, then froze, sure he’d awakened Reed. Reed didn’t stir. Relieved, Earley swung his legs onto the floor and unfolded himself towards the bus’s low ceiling. He slunk to the kitchen, stepped into his unlaced boots and ducked out the front door.

  The clearing was thick with mist, all the familiar landmarks obscured. Tree trunks loomed up into nothingness, low boughs receding in layers of scrim. Earley took a deep breath. He could feel the faint needling of sideways rain, misting cool moisture all over his skin. It was almost as good as a shower. He leaned back and closed his eyes, letting the miniature drops cool his eyelids. This was more like it. Now he was someone he recognized. Someone he knew how to be.

  He shook his wet head like a dog and set off towards the twin hemlock saplings where he’d dug the latrine. In moments, the midnight-blue bus was swallowed by swirling fog. I could get totally lost, he thought, wending his way down the path that revealed itself only a couple of steps at a time. The thought pleased him. He imagined just walking off into the woods and never returning, living off berries and steelhead. He had his Buck knife and a good pair of boots; what more did a man really need?

  Earley unzipped and took hold of his dick, stopping short at the memory of Reed’s fingers doing the same thing last night. And I came like a shot, Earley thought. What the hell does that make me?

  Well, I didn’t touch his, he thought savagely, pissing. He thought of the hundreds of times that he’d stood at a urinal next to some stranger and whipped out his joint without giving it two seconds’ thought. Never again, he thought. Now I’ll be wondering whether he thinks I’m a faggot. Earley stood still for a moment, listening to drops shift through boughs. Then he zipped up his fly and headed back into the fog.

  The bus smelled like a Led Zeppelin concert. The stink of stale pot smoke hit Earley between the eyes as soon as he opened the door. He made extra-strong coffee and poured nearly all of it into his thermos, hoping he’d make it out to his truck before Reed even woke. The guy was on serious painkillers, codeine and Darvon, plus a few hits of the Thai stick that Earley had rolled to catch up with him. Maybe he’d sleep until noon. Earley knew he was being a coward, but he was willing to live with himself if it got him back into the clearcut. He craved a long stretch of solitude so intensely it felt like a thirst. Work would steady him, help clear his head. He smeared peanut butter across a tortilla and rolled it up hastily, grabbing some chips and a couple bananas. Then he heard a low groan from his bedroom. Damn. Reed was awake.

  Earley had never been lucky with exits. He pictured himself hunkered down behind Margie’s propane tank and winced. Reed knew he was up; there was no graceful way to get out without seeing him first. Earley could hear sounds of thumping and shifting behind the orange curtains. He imagined Reed struggling painfully onto his cast, standing up to the sound of a door slam. Too harsh, he thought. I can’t do that to him. “Need help?” he called back to Reed.

  “Nah,” came the answer. “I’m cool.” Reed parted the curtains and flashed a shy smile. He hobbled out, steadying himself with a hand on the wall. He’d slept in his jeans, and they hung down so low that his hipbones stuck out like twin blades.

  “How’s your leg?”

  “It sucks.” Reed sounded cheerful. He scooped up a container of pills from the trunk and swallowed one dry. Then he looked in the kitchen and saw Earley’s lunch on the counter.

  “You’re going to work?” Reed’s voice came out strained, less accusing than hurt.


  Earley squirmed. “Might as well. Gotta go get your tools before they rust. Thought I’d carve up the rest of that big monster log while I’m at it.”

  Reed didn’t say a word. He looked down at the split-open apple, now brown, that was pinned to the table with Earley’s knife. Earley continued, “I would’ve come in, but I figured you needed the rest more than anything.”

  “More than good morning? More than how are you feeling?”

  “I already asked.”

  “How my leg is. I don’t give a shit about my damn leg.” Reed reached out for Earley’s hand. Earley withdrew it.

  “Look, Reed, I didn’t . . . I’ve never done that before.”

  “Neither have I,” said Reed. Earley nodded, relieved. So it was just something that came out of nowhere, maybe because they had gotten so stoned, or because they were both missing Zan. There was no need to put it in words.

  “But I’ve wanted to.” Reed said it quietly, staring down at his hands.

  Something closed off inside Earley’s chest. He wanted to beg Reed to stop, not to say any more, but it was already too late. The words had been spoken, the boundary was crossed. “You can’t unconfess a confession,” Earley’s gramma had said to him once, many years ago, and he knew that Reed’s words had burned into his brain in the very same way, that he’d still remember them years from now.

  Reed looked at him. “Not just with you. There was this Portuguese kid on my track team, Fernando. We used to train distance together. We were buddies, you know, both had girlfriends and all, but I couldn’t stop thinking about him, what it would be like . . . ” He trailed off, staring out at the fog. “It’s just always been there. Way down deep under everything else.”

  Earley did not want to hear about guys named Fernando. “But what about Zan?”

  “What about her?” Reed asked, his voice tender.

  “I thought you were madly in love with her.”

  “I am,” said Reed. “You can be more than one thing at once.”

  Earley didn’t answer. The picture he couldn’t escape, of himself reaching out for the nape of Reed’s neck, had leaped back into his head again. He felt dizzy, uprooted. Reed was still talking, he realized.

  “Look, I spent two years living in San Francisco and didn’t come out. You’ve got to figure this wasn’t the top of my wish list.” Reed was looking right at him, his blue eyes imploring. “It doesn’t change who I am. I’m not going to wear feather boas and platform shoes.”

  “What do you call those?” said Earley, jabbing a toe at Reed’s caulk boots, which stood on the mat by the door. Reed laughed. He thinks it’s a joke, Earley realized; he thinks I’m okay with this. He swallowed hard as Reed stepped forward, pressing his cheek against Earley’s wool shirt.

  “When you carried me down off the mountain, you know what I thought? ‘This is as close as I’ll ever get. This is worth breaking my leg for.’ ”

  “I’m not,” Earley said. This was scaring him.

  “Yes, you are.” Reed’s voice was fervent. He shook his head. “I can’t believe that I’m saying this out loud. It’s been in my head for so long.”

  Earley took a deep breath, extricating himself from Reed’s arms. “Look, I don’t know how that happened last night, but it was a one-time thing.”

  “Not for me,” said Reed.

  “Well, I’m not gonna do it again.” Earley’s voice sounded strident, even to his ears. “It’s just not who I am.”

  “It’s a part of you,” Reed said. “The part that you don’t want to look at.”

  “You got that right,” said Earley. “I don’t.”

  Reed’s eyes traveled over his face. “Okay,” he said quietly. “That’s pretty clear. So I guess I just live with it.” He limped towards the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have to piss something wicked.”

  “Do it out the emergency door,” Earley said. “There’s no steps.”

  “I can handle the steps,” said Reed. “Got to get used to this.” He limped forward and Earley made room for him, turning away as Reed thumped down the stairs and pushed open the door.

  “Fuckin’ chowdah out there,” Reed went on. “I can’t see a damn thing.” He stood on the bottom step, arcing spray into the fog. When he turned back, he still had his dick in his hand.

  “What the hell are you doing?” snapped Earley.

  “That’s all the difference,” said Reed. “Between me and the other three hundred people you’ve slept with.”

  Earley felt his blood rising, his hands stiffening into fists. “If you didn’t have that damn cast on, I’d slam you right through that door.”

  “Do it,” said Reed, raising both hands in surrender. His penis stuck out of his jeans like a big veiny finger, pointing directly at Earley. I’m going to kill you, thought Earley. He thought of the knife on the table, the rifle stashed over his head, the edge of the gorge. A dangerous rage simmered under his skull; he felt like his father, about to explode any which way, and God help whoever was standing in range.

  “I’m going to work,” Earley said in a low growl. “Get out of my way.”

  They stood for a long moment facing each other, like gunfighters waiting to draw. Then Reed reached down and zipped his fly. Earley scooped up his thermos and left without saying good-bye.

  Earley worked without pause, attacking the rest of the giant log. Then he picked up the mallet and froe Reed had left there the previous day and hammered the fragrant rounds, splitting off bolt after bolt, unrelenting. He worked till sweat poured down his face and his sides heaved. Fuck, he thought. Fuck. It’s not helping.

  How did it happen? he wondered, his mind swinging wild as he wielded the wedge-shaped froe, crashing it down into wood. The memories cascaded through his whole body: the taste of Reed’s tongue and the warmth of his fingers, their sliding caress. But the image that seized him up most was of Reed hunching over his mandolin, freezing as Earley reached out to stroke his neck. I made the first move, he thought. Reed took it further, but I touched him first.

  Earley shook his head, trying to dislodge the memory. Not in my wildest dreams, he thought. He’d been stymied to find himself sharing a bed with a man and a woman, but this was beyond any sense of himself that he’d ever imagined. He wasn’t as shaken by what Reed had done—a hand job was nothing, just locker room stuff; any port in a storm—as by what he, Earley Jude Ritter, lifelong lover of women, had felt as he reached for Reed’s neck. That was the part no amount of hard work could erase.

  Earley shouldered the mallet and stood looking down over Suhammish clearcut. The afternoon sun was beginning to burn off the fog, so it lifted in vertical wisps, like an old-country vision of souls in flight, rising to judgment. Below him, the fireweed was starting to bud out in vivid pink spires. Earley loved fireweed for its willfulness, rising from ash and mud, the gashed land’s first effort to heal itself. Next would come shrubs, alder, Douglas fir, hemlock and finally western red cedar, the climax species, the second growth. In a century even the sawed-off stumps he was leaving behind would be gone for good, reclaimed by moss and rot. No one would know this had once been a clearcut, that some sad pair of shake-rats had busted their humps on this mountainside, scraping a living from splinters of wood.

  Nothing stays put, Earley thought. In a couple more days he’d have cut up the last of the oldgrowth stumps and bundled their cords for the chopper line. Clay Johannsen would carry them off to the mill, and Earley would never set foot on this ridge again. He looked to the west, where hill after green hill unrolled to the skyline. How many of them would be shaved down to mud by this Royalton contract? His road would be gutted by skidders and bulldozers, his clearing turned into a heavy equipment lot. Even the waterfall creek would be ruined, its clear water clotted with mudslides and slash.

  Time to move on. Earley was sick of that phrase, not just of the words but of the whole notion of living his life as a rambling man. Rootlessness was its own sort of harness
; he felt as tied down by the obligation to keep on moving as he would be by settling. Maybe more, he reflected, thinking about the cabin he’d wanted to build, with its view of Olympus. That would have been something new, at least, in a lifetime of moving from one makeshift perch to another. He had a quick flash of himself as an old man, hunched over some knife-scratched bar, all jutting elbows and leathery fading tattoos. But I don’t even have the tattoos, he thought. Too much commitment.

  He thought of the words to that Joplin song Reed had been playing last night. Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose . Guess I’m free, he thought glumly. In a few short weeks, he’d have to scratch out a new home for himself, to drive his bus into some other clearing, learn its trees, streams and gullies by heart and then, more than likely, move on again. Would Reed still be with him? Would Zan?

  Zan. Earley’s heart pounded harder as soon as he thought of her. He wanted to be with her right now, to bury himself in her body and lick the salt tears from her cheeks as she came. She would still all the voices that plagued him, make him feel whole.

  I need to get laid, he thought. Laid by a woman. Reed was stuck at the bus; there was nothing to stop Earley from driving up to the treeplanters’ camp and striding right into Zan’s tent. He could carry her off like a pirate, or take her right there, in the mud and straw. Zan was as carnal as he was, a restless appetite seeking release. Earley could still feel the rush of emotion that had surged through him the very first time they made love, the sensation of power and knowledge, of primeval mating, their two bodies fusing like some force of nature. Reed could never be those things to him.

  He could feel the heat rise through his groin like sap through a tree. I want her this minute, he thought. I can’t wait until Friday. He grabbed up his Husqy and started downhill.