Clearcut

by Nina Shengold

  Margie nodded, her face strained. “I’m here if you need me.”

  “I know you are. Thanks, Margie.” Earley bent down and kissed her on top of the head. She squeezed her eyes shut and clung to his body as if she were drowning.

  “You’re welcome,” she whispered. They stood for a long time like that, holding on to each other. Then Earley let go and got back in his truck.

  Earley could feel the millworkers’ eyes on him when he went to Gillies’ to cash out. He’d been a magnet for gossip all week. Every place he went, somebody was staring, or smirking, or both. He’s the one, he imagined them thinking, the one who was fucking three people at once, the one who cracked Harlan Walkonis’ skull when he caught them, the one whose partner fell out of the sky.

  When Vern Gillies gouged him as usual, skimming a huge cut for Scoter and Clay off his paycheck, Earley was almost relieved to be treated like everyone else. It didn’t feel right to be taking Reed’s cut of the money, but he didn’t know what else to do with it. Vern worked a wad of tobacco between his stained teeth as he watched Earley stuff the cash into his pocket. “You driven that bus off the Royalton clearcut yet?”

  “Hell no,” Earley said. “And I don’t plan to, either. I live where I live.”

  “They’ll be booting you out in a week and a half.”

  “Let ’em try,” Earley said. “I got nothing to lose.”

  Vern shrugged and spit into a bottle as Earley walked back out the door. I’ll fight this, he thought. I’m going to build my damn cabin in spite of them all. That’s what Reed would have done.

  It had taken him over a week to go back to the clearcut. The state police had closed the case, classifying Reed’s fall as an accident. Clay’s license was suspended for six to eight weeks; he was told he would lose it for good if he ever let anyone ride on his hook rope again.

  Earley had finished the rest of the flyout on foot, traversing the steep terrain time and again to hook bundles, and then to unload them back into the truck. He welcomed the numbness that came with exhaustion. The ache in his bones didn’t bother him nearly as much as driving alone to his bus at the end of the day. Everything there was a treacherous road map that led either to Reed or to Zan. He was haunted by thoughts of her, out there somewhere alone in the world, beyond his reach.

  He went to the post office every morning. One day, he imagined, a postcard might be there in Zan’s jagged handwriting, telling him how he could find her. Earley pictured himself climbing into the driver’s seat of the school bus and rumbling down off his mountainside, headed for . . . where? She had talked about Canada once; was she hiding out somewhere on Vancouver Island? How long would she wait before she risked contact? Reed could have told me, he thought, and a hot pang of grief seared the back of his throat as he realized Zan didn’t know Reed was dead. If she does send a postcard, she’ll write to us both. And her name won’t be Zan.

  He went to his bedroom and buried his face in the futon, yanking the covers up over his head. The sheets stunk of sweat, but he couldn’t face washing them. He hadn’t done laundry in weeks, hadn’t showered since Reed was alive, and the animal stink of his own skin repulsed him. His thoughts eddied and spun like a whirlpool, pulling him down. It was painful to think of Zan running away, but thinking of Reed was unbearable. If I’d grabbed for the hook just a few seconds sooner, if I hadn’t turned when he kissed me . . . The echoes were endless.

  And it didn’t make any difference what Sergeant Buck had concluded—Earley still had those dreams every night, about Reed’s body falling, and worse than that, one night, a dream in which he’d pushed Reed off a cliff.

  He awoke drenched in sweat, gulping air like a hooked bass. He stumbled outside, stark naked and barefoot, his heart racing. Where had he hidden that pot of Reed’s? The bourbon he’d bought with his blood money?

  Earley walked into the woods. He didn’t know where he was going and he didn’t care, as long as it got him away from his nightmare. The sky overhead was starless, a cloud-wrapped wool gray, and he had no idea if it was still evening, past midnight, the dark before dawn. His feet crunched on branches and sharp stones, thorns tore at his skin, but the pain didn’t matter, none of it mattered, nothing was real except loss. He stumbled on blindly, led by some force that subsumed his own will, like an animal making its way down a trail not because he had made a decision but simply because this was where the trail led.

  Earley stood at the edge of the gorge. Either his eyes had accustomed themselves to the gray or he had some sixth sense that let him know just where the ledge was, the rim of the much greater darkness below. He could picture the jagged tumble of boulders beneath him, where Reed’s mattress lay. He could hear the dull tumble of waterfall off to his left, could feel the seduction of sky at his feet.

  I’m Reed, he thought. I’m dangling alone at the end of a rope, and one step in the air puts an end to all pain. Could I do it?

  He thought of himself bruised and broken below, of his neck snapped like Reed’s. There’d be no one to find him or carry him home; he’d make some wild creature a meal. What hole would he tear in the world if he left it? Would anyone notice if he disappeared, leaving nothing behind but a ’58 GMC pickup and a blue-painted bus in the woods? What was holding his feet to the ledge?

  It must be fear, Earley figured, though he didn’t feel anything that he recognized as being frightened, no heart-pounding, eye-bulging panic. What did he have to fear? That he wouldn’t die right away, or that he would? That his gramma had really been right about hellfire and brimstone?

  It came down to one simple thing: a step forward or back. An impulse, like everything else, that you followed or choked.

  Maybe I’ll land on that mattress, he thought. If I’m meant to survive, I will.

  Earley closed his eyes, swaying, and felt himself pitch into space. He felt every pore wake as he plunged, felt a shout of sheer terror boil out of his lungs, felt the air rushing past him, the sensation of time itself frozen, suspended above him like Clay’s helicopter, its rotor blades shredding the air into glittering shards. But I didn’t mean to, he thought. Not like this. He felt his arms and chest flatten, his knees thudding onto the ground, one landing on bare rock, the other on something wet, springy, improbably soft.

  He had fallen halfway on Reed’s mattress. Shit, he thought, wincing. I missed.

  His right leg was throbbing. Blood gushed from his kneecap. He shifted his weight and rolled gingerly onto the mattress, feeling his heart knock against his ribs. Everything hurts, he thought. Guess I’m not dead.

  Earley had no idea how long he lay there. The mattress cover was soggy with mildew and rain, but it still held a sharp, acrid smell of charred lamp oil. He pressed his cheek into it, closed his eyes, letting the memories flood him. I had that, he thought. I had that much love in my life. I can have it again.

  He pushed himself up on his hands and good knee. Sore, but his body was working; in Reed’s words, it played. He rocked back on his haunches and stood, slowly unfurling himself to his full height. The sky was beginning to lighten. Above, he could make out a faint tinge of pearl, not quite pink, like the lip of a shell.

  Earley picked his way over the boulders that lined the steep gorge. The gash on his right leg was pulsing with pain and the palms of his hands throbbed. Alive, he thought. Blood moving through my veins. Welcome.

  He followed the gorge towards the sound of the waterfall, clambering over the rocks to the spot where the creekbed had shifted its course many lifetimes ago, leaving its higher fork dry and the lower one moist and impossibly fertile. Even the rocks here were bursting with life, silver-green lichen yielding to mosses, then bracken and fern. Skunk cabbage unfurled in the mud between bunchberry dogwoods, and fallen logs nursed colonnades of new seedlings. The roar of the water was constant.

  The falls tumbled over a moss-green cliff, silvered with dew-drops that shone in the first rays of low-slanting sunlight. A sheer veil of mist undulated around the white water. Earley stepp
ed into the spray, letting its soothing coolness caress his bruised skin. Then he took a deep breath and stepped under the waterfall’s icy cascade.

  The water streamed over his head, onto his eyelids and over his knotted, sore shoulders. The cold made his heart pump.

  He thought about Zan, far away from him now, all by herself in the treacherous world; about Margie, back home on her waterbed, wondering if she would ever be loved again; and he thought about Reed, laid to rest in the ground, who would stay in his heart for the rest of his life.

  The sun caught the mist, iridescent. Good-bye, my buddy, Earley thought as he lifted his arms to the cascading water. We’re finally taking that shower together. He tipped back his head and just stood there, alive on the earth.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  No book is an island. Boundless thanks to Laura Cunning-ham for her many gifts and kindnesses; to Becky Stowe for keeping me on the trail; and to the rest of my writers’ group colleagues, past and present—John Bowers, Da Chen, Casey Kurtti, Ron Nyswaner, Zachary Sklar, Scott Spencer and Mary Louise Wilson—for their insight, generosity and grace along the way. Thanks to my wonderful editor, Diana Secker Larson, for working her tactful magic; to Phyllis Wender and her associates Sonia Pabley and Susie Cohen for their tenacious belief in this book and in me; to Rosemary Ahern for her sage advice; to St. Karen Williams for saving my computer and my sanity, many times apiece; and to Marla Jea for copyediting above and beyond.

  I am also grateful to Tim McNulty and Pat O’Hara for their invaluable and inspiring photo reference books on the Pacific Northwest, and to Tim for sharing a lifetime of firsthand research; to Ruth Kirk and Jerry Franklin, authors of The Olympic Rainforest: An Ecological Web, for the marvelous quote about hermaphroditic banana slugs; to Steve Penczak, for Roosevelt elk and electric guitar information; to Tim Whalen, for burning my “Blues for Earley” CD; to Stillhouse Rounder Geoffrey Harden, for Reed’s mandolin and musical licks; to Mark Chmiel, Geoff and Sarah Chodoff, Jeff Garrett, Sturgis Warner and Scott Ziegler-Horton for giving a 5’7˝ writer an angle on life over 6’4˝; to my crews at Olympic Reforestation and the Young Adult Conservation Corps, Olympic and Tongass National Forests, for teaching me woods work; to Brent Robison for publishing my first Northwest story in Prima Materia; to Karen Kessler R.N. for medical help; to Tom O’Neill for Earley’s truck; and to Shelley Wyant for his Zig-Zags.

  Grateful thanks also to my fellow travelers at Actors & Writers and Chronogram; to Alan Amtzis, Susan Krawitz, Eric Lane, Nicole Quinn and the Reeders for life-sustaining friendships; to Margaret and Leonard Shengold for life; to David and Larry Shengold for brotherhood; and to my dear daughter, Maya, for everything.

  Nina Shengold

  CLEARCUT

  Nina Shengold won the Writers Guild Award and a GLAAD Award nomination for Labor of Love, starring Marcia Gay Harden, and the ABC Playwright Award for Homesteaders. With Eric Lane, she has edited eleven theater anthologies for Vintage Books and Viking Penguin. She has worked in both the Olympic and Tongass National Forests, and currently lives in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York with her daughter, Maya. Clearcut is her first novel.

  AN ANCHOR BOOKS ORIGINAL, AUGUST 2005

  Copyright © 2005 by Nina Shengold

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

  Ice Nine Publishing Company, Inc.: Lyrics from Brokedown Palace by Robert Hunter, copyright Ice Nine Publishing Company. Used with permission.

  New Directions Publishing Corp.: Excerpt from “Logging, Part 2” by Gary Snyder, from Myths and Texts, copyright © 1978 by Gary Snyder. .

  Warner Bros. Publications U.S., Inc.: “House of the Rising Sun” by Alan Price, copyright © 1964 (Renewed) Keith Prowse Music Publishing Co. Ltd. (UK). All rights reserved in the U.S.A. and Canada administered by EMI Gallico Catalog Inc. (Publishing) and Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc. (print); “Ramblin’ Man” by Forrest Richard Betts, copyright © 1973 (Renewed) Unichappell Music Inc. (BMI) and Forrest Richard Betts Music (BMI). All rights administered by Unichappell Music Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL 33014.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Shengold, Nina.

  Clearcut: a novel / by Nina Shengold.

  p. cm.

  1. Northwest, Pacific—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3569.H39377C54 2004

  813’.54—dc22 2004046200

  www.anchorbooks.com

  www.randomhouse.com

  eISBN: 978-0-307-42529-4

  v3.0