Clearcut

by Nina Shengold

  “No cops,” Zan said wildly. “No cops, Reed!”

  “Ssh,” said Reed. “We’ve got to take care of him.”

  “What if they find me here?” Zan’s voice rose in a panic. She backed up against Earley’s truck, her eyes huge and flat, like a cornered animal. “I can’t, Reed. If anyone finds me, you know what they’ll do.”

  Earley didn’t know what she was talking about. “How far down is your car?”

  “What?” Zan stared at him blankly.

  “Your Volvo. Harlan’s truck is behind it. I’ll drive him in that. Can I carry him down, or should I take my pickup?” Earley’s voice sounded patient and calm, as if he was teaching Zan how to tie trout flies, not trying to figure out how to transport a man with a head wound to an emergency room thirty miles to the north. I’m on autopilot, he thought, stepping into his boots. Someone’s phoning it in.

  “It’s far,” Zan said, her voice thin and childlike. “I drove off the road.”

  Earley folded her into his arms. “I’ll take care of you,” he said. Zan buried her face in his chest. He could feel her whole body shaking with choked-off sobs.

  “Earley,” she whispered. And that was all.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The hospital receptionist stared up at Earley. “You again?” “This one deserved it.”

  She frowned. A couple of paramedics in sea green scrubs came with a gurney and rolled Harlan through double doors. One of the men wore a shower cap. Earley wondered why, and then wondered how he could be thinking about that when Zan might have killed Margie’s husband. The ride into town had been hairy. Harlan had groaned once or twice, but most of the time he remained inert, his bulk shifting with every tight curve. Every time he slammed up against Earley’s right shoulder, Earley found himself flinching, as if he’d been jumped by a corpse.

  The receptionist passed him a clipboard. Her lips were as thin as a bobby pin. “I can’t check him in without his insurance and social security card. Are you family?”

  “No way.”

  “Is there somebody else I can call?”

  Earley hesitated, imagining Margie getting the news by phone. “I’ll go get her,” he said, heading for the glass doors.

  “Wait. You can’t leave him here. Sir!”

  The doors parted for Earley, and he was outside.

  The lights in the trailer were low. As Earley drove up, he saw the blue flickering of a TV in the living room. He could picture Margie slumped on the Naugahyde couch, forking up dinner and staring at Happy Days reruns for company. She deserves better, he thought as he walked up the flagstone path. Better than Harlan, and better than me.

  He rang the front doorbell and stood on the welcome mat, shifting his feet. Behind the aluminum door, he could hear Margie padding across the shag rug. “Amber Ann? Is that you?” She opened the door and her face went from startled to angry in two seconds flat. “You’ve got some nerve coming round here when—”

  He cut her off. “Margie. Harlan’s in the hospital.”

  “What?” Margie stared at him. “What happened? Why are you—”

  “There was a fight.”

  “Christ, Earley, what did you do?” It wasn’t me, he started to say, but thought better of it. Margie grabbed a windbreaker and walked out the door. “Drive me,” she said. “You can tell me the rest on the way.”

  A Coke machine rattled and buzzed. Earley sat in the hospital waiting room, memorizing the fake woodgrain swirls on the paneling, sucking a cup of cold coffee. The noise from the snowy TV set got under his skin, but he didn’t turn it off; someone must want it, he figured, though he was the last person left in the room. He wondered how long it would be until Margie came out, if she even remembered that he was still here. I can’t leave her stranded, he thought, even though he was dying to get back to his bus, back to Zan and Reed.

  He took Harlan’s keys from his pocket for the thirtieth time, twisting them in his fingers. His knuckles were swollen and one of his eyes throbbed. He wondered if Harlan was still alive, what would happen to them if he wasn’t.

  Margie came in, her purse clutched to her side. “Thanks for waiting,” she said.

  “Any news?”

  “He’s got a concussion. While they were stitching the back of his head, he opened his eyes and said, ‘Fucking Japs.’ Apparently that’s a good sign.” She took Earley’s coffee cup, filled it from the water fountain and plopped in a couple of Alka Seltzers, drinking it down before they had a chance to fizz.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Margie shrugged. “He pulled a gun on you. What were you gonna do, let him plug you? He would’ve. It’s okay for him to shack up with that blonde, but let me take one step to the left and forget it.”

  “Let’s get out of this place.” Earley rose. “If you’re ready, I mean.”

  Margie nodded. “He’s sleeping. They’re keeping him here for a couple more days to check out his brain function. He had a skull fracture and seventeen stitches. Harlan’s just lucky his head is so thick. Oh, and he broke his wrist.”

  “I broke his wrist,” Earley said.

  “I figured,” said Margie. She took Earley’s hand, soothing his split knuckles. “Nobody ever got into a fight over me before.”

  Earley winced inwardly. What would Margie say when she found out the truth, that Harlan had caught him buck naked with Reed? And Zan, who had been such a bitch to her back at the bar? I should tell her myself, he thought. Better she hears it from my lips than Harlan’s.

  “Margie . . .” he started, and couldn’t find words. Margie looked at him, hopeful. Oh Lord, Earley thought. Was it evil of him to wish Harlan would have some amnesia or something? He couldn’t bear to break Margie’s heart any further. At least not tonight. Let it ride, he thought, holding the door open for her.

  “Thanks,” she said shyly.

  Some gentleman, he thought. If you only knew.

  Earley drove past the neon of Scoter’s motel and headed through town, past the Cedar Bar Lounge and the Shamrock. The moon had sunk under the clouds and the sky arched above them like navy blue crepe, like his grandmother’s going-to-church suit. Margie gazed out the window without saying much. After awhile she leaned her cheek onto his upper arm, closing her eyes. “I can feel you steering,” she said.

  Earley turned his head, resting his lips on the soft gray that parted her hair. He pulled up in front of her trailer. “I hope you can sleep,” he said.

  Margie paused. “Aren’t you coming with me?”

  “I can’t. Not tonight.”

  Margie looked at him. “What about Harlan’s truck?” she said, struggling to keep her voice even. She wants something from me, thought Earley. I best head it off.

  “I’ll bring it back to you tomorrow.”

  “What if I need it tonight?” she said. Earley reached into his pocket to roll up a smoke. Margie’s eyes flicked across his face, noting his silence. She folded her arms. “You don’t want me to see where you live.”

  I don’t want you to see who I live with, he thought, trying to picture how Zan would react if he showed up with Margie. “That’s not it at all,” he said, hoping he sounded convincing. “You’ve had a rough night. It’s a half-hour drive and the roads are the pits.”

  “Are you kidding? This truck is a tank.”

  “Margie—”

  “What if the hospital calls me at four in the morning? My car’s in the shop.”

  “It is?” he said, swallowing hard.

  Margie glared at him. “Drive me to your place,” she said. “This is bullshit.”

  There was no way around it. Earley backed up. “If you’re sure.”

  Harlan’s double-cab crew truck lumbered uphill, high-beams raking the trunks of the trees. Earley braked at the crossroads. “Remember this fork,” he told Margie. “If you turn the wrong way, you’ll be heading for Suhammish clearcut. Nothing up there but a few chunks of cedar and miles of bad road.”

  Margie grabbed at the dash as the truck r
attled over some washboard. “I didn’t realize you were this far off the highway.”

  “It ain’t the suburbs,” he said, shifting down to first gear. The ditch on the side of the road was a deep gash of mud. He couldn’t remember how far Zan had gotten before she’d abandoned her Volvo. On every tight curve, he expected to find himself facing her taillights. Pray she’s already asleep, he begged, even though he was dead certain that Zan and Reed would be waiting up, anxious for news about Harlan’s condition. He twisted the steering wheel, frowning.

  His headlights swung over the dirt road and caught something metal. Earley stepped on the brake and found himself facing the grille of his pickup truck, right where he’d left it. There was a raw gouge of earth and a poacher’s spade left on the roadside; no Volvo. He felt all the air leave his lungs, as if someone had kicked him. “Where is she?” he stammered.

  Margie turned her head. “She?” The syllable arched like the back of a cat.

  Earley tried feebly to cover his tracks. “Reed’s girlfriend. Zan. You remember.”

  “Oh yeah,” Margie said. “I remember her well.” She was looking at Earley like someone deciphering code. It must show in my face, he thought. Fuck, I can’t hide this. She’s gone. He pushed open the door.

  “Thanks for the lift,” he said, fighting the panic that welled in his gut. “You got all the turns straight?”

  “Aren’t you going to ask me inside?”

  He shook his head quickly. “It’s not a good time.”

  Margie looked down at her lap. “It won’t ever be a good time, will it, Earley?”

  Not now, he groaned to himself. Why did women always roll out these impossible questions at just the wrong moment? He was tempted to say she was right, just to shut her up, but he laid a big hand on her forearm instead.

  “Margie, I gotta get up there. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Sure,” she said, nodding, her mouth a straight line. “You don’t have a phone.”

  Reed stood up the second he saw Earley enter. “How is he?”

  “Where’s Zan?” Earley swiveled his head, as if she might be hiding somewhere in the bus. Reed had already taped Hefty bags over the cracked kitchen windows; Earley noticed the hems of his trousers were caked with mud.

  Earley leaned over Reed. He could feel the rage rising again, that sickening heat at the back of his scalp. “You dug her out, didn’t you? You helped her leave.”

  “I had to.” Reed’s eyes didn’t flinch. “It wasn’t the first time.”

  Earley swallowed hard. “What?”

  “Sit down. There’s some stuff you don’t know.”

  Earley folded his arms and stood waiting. His throat felt constricted, as if he was choking on something. His swollen eye throbbed.

  “First tell me. Is Harlan still . . . ?”

  “Just a concussion.”

  “Thank God.” Reed cracked open a beer. He drank most of it down before he said anything else. “Zan was too panicked to wait anymore. She was sure there’d be cops.”

  Earley remembered her screaming, “No cops,” and an unbidden memory needled his brain: how tense Zan had looked in Seattle when Reed made that joke about getting arrested.

  “Is she wanted for something?”

  Reed nodded. “There was this guy at the restaurant where she worked in Berkeley. I think he was kind of retarded. He worked as a dishwasher.”

  Earley sat down and reached for Reed’s beer. His mind was racing so fast he could barely make sense of the words Reed was saying. Somehow he already knew where the whole thing was leading.

  “Frankie started hanging around after work. When Zan left the restaurant, he’d walk on the opposite side of the street and just stare at her. Never did anything, just gave her the creeps. Then one night he followed her into the—”

  “How did she kill him?”

  Reed stared at Earley. “She told you?”

  He shook his head. How did I know? he thought. “Knife, gun? What?”

  “Knife. In the stomach. He bled to death while she was calling for help. She was too freaked out to wait for the cops.” Reed looked Earley right in the eye. “I bought her the bus ticket north. Gave her eight hundred bucks to get started and swore that I’d never tell anyone.”

  “Fuck.” Earley stared at his hands.

  “It was self-defense,” Reed said. “The guy tried to rape her.”

  Earley nodded. He could still see the look on Zan’s face as she went after Harlan, the fear in her eyes when he reached for that belt. Maybe that’s how I knew it, he thought. There was something he’d recognized, all the way back, some deep flash of terror and pain that had passed through him like an electrical charge the first time they’d made love. He had wanted to save Zan from something, without knowing what it was. Reed was still talking, he realized.

  “. . . so she panicked and left him. I begged her to turn herself in and plead self-defense, but she’s always been out of her mind about cops. I used to wonder if she’d been in the Weather Underground or something. Her name when I met her was Linda.”

  Earley stared at him. This part he hadn’t expected. “Her name isn’t Zan?”

  “Linda Ortega.”

  “She’s Mexican?”

  “Half. Grew up outside San Diego. Or that’s what she told me.”

  “Not Guam?” Earley could feel his voice shaking.

  “I never heard that one before,” said Reed. “She makes it sound real every time. Sometimes I wonder if she knows the difference.”

  “Damn.” Earley stared at a crack in the table, blinking back tears. He felt dizzy, uprooted. Why did it shock him so much to find out Zan had used a false name, even more than it shocked him to learn she had stabbed a man?

  I don’t know the first thing about her, he thought. Not one goddamn thing. He remembered the first time he’d met her, the sharp, teasing way she had reeled off her name. Zan Koutros, Greek on both sides. Alexandra, but who has the time. Turned sixteen in Baja. Was anything she’d ever told him the truth? If he’d fallen in love with a whole pack of lies, were his feelings lies too?

  No, he thought. They were as real as it gets.

  “You asked me one time why I let her leave me,” said Reed. “Now you know.”

  Earley looked at his face, at those ghostly blue eyes. Wrong, he thought. I don’t know anything.

  “What should we do with Harlan’s gun?” Reed asked. “Keep it as evidence?”

  Zan still thinks she killed him, Earley realized. I’ve got to tell her that Harlan pulled through, or she’ll panic and bolt. If she hasn’t already. He stood up so fast that his head slammed against the low curve of the ceiling.

  Reed grimaced. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” Earley said, and ran out of the bus.

  Earley made several wrong turns on the logging roads up to the planters’ camp. He remembered Zan giving directions, sandwiched between him and Reed, but most of the landmarks she’d mentioned were lost in the darkness. Every mistake that he made added fuel to his panic. He was driving so fast his truck bounced like a jackrabbit. Finally his headlights swung over the wickiup high on the ridge.

  He jumped out of the truck and peeled back the flap of the kitchen yurt, staring in at the firelit circle of planters who turned his way. He saw at a glance that Zan wasn’t among them. The canvas dome was as hot as a sauna, the air thick and garlicky. Young Nick was ladling some kind of tea at the woodstove.

  “Namaste,” he said. “Want some yerba?”

  Earley shook his head. “I’m looking for Zan.”

  “She’s not here,” said Just Nick, enthroned on a blanket-topped hay bale across from the woodstove. “She split a few hours ago. Took all her stuff.”

  Earley’s heart seemed to freeze in his chest. “Where did she go?”

  Just Nick met his eye with a satisfied glint. Earley noticed his hand was on Cassie’s thigh. “If Zan wanted you to know, she would have told you.”

  “She left somethi
ng for you,” Cassie droned. “It’s in our tent.”

  Earley whirled around, frantic. He ducked through the door and lit out for Zan’s tent, his boots pounding into the packed mud and straw. She couldn’t be gone. She just couldn’t. He pulled back the green and gray tent flap and struck his Bic lighter, frantically sweeping his head for a note, a sign, anything.

  Zan’s cot was a bare slab of canvas. The hay-strewn floor on her side of the tent was muddy and trampled, the stump table stripped. And then Earley saw it, hung from a hook on the tent frame: her red dress. He gathered it into his arms and buried his face in it, breathing her in. A lingering fragrance of almonds still clung to the fabric, diaphanous, empty.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The top of Olympus glowed crimson at dawn. The sky was stippled with thin smears of cloud, and the firs barely moved. Good flying weather, thought Earley, mechanically pulling suspenders up onto his shoulders and zipping the fly of his highwater pants. At least something’s gone right.

  For the past three days he had worked himself into a stupor, criss-crossing the clearcut with ropes on his back and binding the cedar they’d cut into bundles. They stood around on the slope at odd angles, like demented haystacks left on a tipped field.

  Reed wanted to help. He’d gotten used to his cast and was walking at close to his usual speed, but the thought of negotiating that steep, mud-gashed bowl on a crutch was absurd. “You’d just slow me down,” Earley told him.

  The truth was that he was relieved to have the excuse of Reed’s broken ankle; he wanted to be by himself. Earley knew that Reed knew it, and knew that it hurt him, and he didn’t care. Not enough to act differently, anyway. All he could think of was Zan. He kept picturing her huddled up in a Greyhound station, eyes haunted, heading for God knows where. He tried to imagine her sticking a knife into somebody’s guts. Was she packing a weapon, or had it been something she’d grabbed from the restaurant kitchen because she was frightened?

  Who was she, this woman he loved, whose absence he felt as a physical pang, like a diver who’d surfaced too fast and come up with the bends? Earley wondered what name she’d use next, if she’d ever stop running. He hoped against hope that she’d write to his G.P.O. box sooner or later, giving him bread crumbs to follow. He couldn’t accept that he might never see her again.