Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work

by Jason Brown

  Pete closed his eyes, and in the white shadow flickering across the backs of his eyelids, he saw Jack’s pale cheeks, as delicate as old linens. Days after Pete had moved back into his parents’ house, his arms still in casts, Jack showed up at the front door. No one had asked him to come.

  “You ever been to one of these?” Jack asked in the truck. Pete said no, and Jack shrugged. “Here’s how it goes: everybody says they’re an alcoholic, no one really thinks they are.”

  Jack showed up again two days later. Even after they started working together, he showed up every other evening at six-thirty. On the trips to and from the meetings, Jack remained silent and hunched over the steering wheel like a cab driver getting paid by the mile. Once, on the way home, Pete complained about someone in the meeting who had gone on too long, and Jack replied, “Ahhh, you’re just a spoiled punk.” Pete slammed the door when he got out of the truck and thought that was it between them, but Jack was there to pick him up for work the next morning and there again for the meeting that night. Going to meetings with Jack, even after he drank, and later working for him, was an obligation Pete had wanted to escape from the start, and he suspected Jack had wanted to escape it as well. He had no idea, looking back, how it had become an obligation, but that’s what it was.

  He got to his feet. The shaking stopped and he thought maybe he was warming up, but his hair and arms were covered with ice. He had taken his T-shirt off again but didn’t remember doing so.

  He made it around a curve in the road, and saw in the distance the store and gas station. His knees would hardly bend, and though he tried to keep the store in sight, he had to look down, too, in order not to slip.

  The store was closed, the windows dark. There were no cars in the lot, but a door slammed nearby and just down the road a guy stepped out of his truck and walked into a ramshackle bar with a neon Bud sign hanging in the window. Pete went to the door of the bar, but he couldn’t turn the knob—his hands wouldn’t grip hard enough—and his voice wouldn’t work. He was feet away from getting warm but had no way inside. He swung his arm from the shoulder and tried to pound on the door, but he could only manage to tap the surface. Desperate, he fell to his knees and collapsed with his back against the door. He could hear the beat of music from inside the bar.

  Pete closed his eyes and pictured a cold gray afternoon in March five years ago when his father had decided to go out behind their house and chop more firewood, which he had ordered late so it was unsplit and green. His father set his ninth beer of the afternoon on the hood of the car and pulled the light axe out of the splitting log where it had been rusting since the fall. He muscled a three-foot-wide piece of maple off the pile, rolled it flat onto the soggy ground, raised the axe high above his head and slipped on a patch of ice, falling to one knee. The second time he raised the axe above his head, he splayed his legs for balance and brought the axe down squarely on the log. The blade sank in only a few inches; the axe was too light. He needed a maul, but even that might not be enough when the wood was green. His father placed his foot on top of the log and tugged on the axe handle until the blade popped out. After half an hour of watching his father work on the same log, Pete couldn’t stand it any more, and he went upstairs. But even with his face buried in the mattress and the pillow clamped over his head, Pete still heard the thud of the axe. It seemed as if the thudding had always been there, as relentless as the ticking of a clock (he could hear it now as he banged the back of his head against the door to the bar). He let his chin fall against his chest and he squeezed his eyes shut, but the banging continued in his thoughts: the rusted axe head rising over his father’s head and crashing back down into the green wood again and again.

  If Jack were not waiting for him on top of the hill, Pete never would have opened his eyes. There was Jack’s truck parked just a few feet in front of his outstretched legs. He crawled to the driver’s side and pushed himself to his feet by leaning against the cab. The window was caked with ice, but he could see the keys in the ignition. A flash of heat passed through his thoughts: his heart raced and he could taste metal. His hands were half closed and his fingers wouldn’t uncurl, but he hooked his fingertips on the latch and yanked up until the door popped open enough for him to nudge in and pull it shut. He leaned his head against the steering wheel and pressed his knuckles together around the keys. He tried to twist, but he couldn’t feel his fingers and the keys kept slipping out of his grip. It was dark again; he had closed his eyes. His hands dropped to his sides, and he heard the whine of a dog hungry for its dinner coming from his own chest.

  He woke some time later with a terrible ache in his limbs. The engine was on and the heater blasting, though he didn’t remember getting the keys to twist. It hurt to close his hands, but he worked them loose and managed to pull the truck onto the road. He had to drive slowly on the translucent ice as blankets of rain and sleet washed over the cab. Nothing looked familiar between passes of the wipers until he saw a large maple. Their footprints had been washed away, but he recognized the spot, and as he tugged on his dry shirt and pants in the cab, the rain and sleet eased off to a drizzle. With a bundle of clothes tucked under his arm, he struggled up the hill. He had to pull himself from tree to tree over the ice. His joints were so swollen and stiff that he moved sluggishly, as if through water.

  When he reached the top of the hill, he looked around, but Jack wasn’t there. Pete yelled his name, his voice hoarse and cracking like a boy’s. Fresh tree limbs had been pulled into a mound over the ashes of the brush Doug had burned, and Pete peeled them off like scales until he found the charred core of what looked at first like a bundle of blackened sticks. A pair of eyes flashed from the middle of the pile, wide white globes centered with green and black. They vanished and appeared again. Gradually, Pete distinguished Jack’s body curled naked with his knees pulled up to his chest and every inch of his skin and hair caked with a thick layer of ash and mud. Jack opened his mouth slowly and his pink tongue appeared. Maybe he was about to speak, but no words came out. He seemed half his normal size. Pete leaned down and draped a coat over him.

  “We have to go,” Pete said, but Jack just stared blankly at him as if he no longer understood the language.

  “Not leaving,” Jack said, his voice barely audible. He reached out to push the coat away. “I’m waiting for Doug.”

  The light completely failed, and Pete only knew Jack was still there by touching Jack’s arms, which were as cold as blocks of wood. Pete reached under the crusted torso and tried to lift, but Jack had seized his arms around a granite boulder and couldn’t or wouldn’t let go. Even as Jack’s breathing slowly eased to a trickle, he still clung to the rock. Pete couldn’t pull him up.

  “Jack, we have to go—I can’t leave you here,” Pete said.

  “No,” Jack said. “I’m staying.”

  Jack closed his eyes, and Pete spread his arms and legs over Jack, making himself into a blanket.

  “It’s me,” Pete said into Jack’s ear. “It’s Doug.” His face stung under the wet streams pouring over his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he said. His voice echoing through the dark woods even sounded like Doug’s, and for a moment he felt as if he were Jack’s son returning to offer forgiveness and to be forgiven.

  Jack let go of the boulder, and Pete pulled him up. Together they slid from tree to tree down the hill, and when they reached the pavement, Pete cradled Jack in his arms and carried him the rest of the way.

  The cab was warm, and Pete piled dry clothes over Jack, aiming the heater vents at his face. Pete called Jack’s name as he hit the gas and after there was no answer, he reached out and touched the side of Jack’s cold face. “Wake up!” he yelled and drove as if it wasn’t too late, speeding down the icy road with the back wheels fishtailing in and out of ruts. After they passed through the intersection and a few miles later joined the main road back to Vaughn, Jack opened his eyes and leaned over the dash to stare at the path the high beams cut through the night.

  RI
VER RUNNER

  1976. The last pulp drive down the Kennebec and there were no alewives in dark schools waiting to ascend the falls, no shad or striped bass or blueback herring. Nothing in the river but sinkers and bark cake and raw waste from sixteen towns coating the bottom, methane bubbling up through the water and pulp in the booms waiting for a freshet.

  Harry Clough put in upriver from the head of the drive so he wouldn’t have to deal with the new drive boss, Gerald Young, some hard hat from Scott who’d never set foot on a log. His bateau drifted, needing no encouragement, and the river gradually took on the shape he remembered. The water brushed along a low bank of thick bayberry and alder and wildflowers. Many a man lost his footing and with not a moment to glance at the others ashore or at the pile man or at the pole man in the bateau holding upriver, he was swept under and maybe never seen, maybe pinched between two sinkers and dragged to the bottom. It’s part of the reason the river still ran so brown.

  When he spotted the hippie director in charge of a documentary film crew getting misinformation from Gerald Young on shore, Harry gave them all the finger. Gerald Young waved him in, and yelled that Harry was going to get himself killed.

  “I ain’t gonna bear-hug no dry kye out of the alder swamps,” Harry yelled. He hadn’t greased up his three-and-sixty case-hardened nail-caulked boots to tromp through the mud. Harry’d show them what it was like to run over a thousand feet of race to escape the better part of a fallen forest bearing down.

  “You’re Haywire Harry, aren’t you,” one of the crew yelled from shore. “You’re the one who rode a log though the sluice at Thirteen Mile Woods in that movie back in ’49.”

  So what? Maybe he was. Man in the suit had paid him five bucks, paid him five bucks to do it again.

  Harry drifted out of view and followed the course of the current for three-quarters of an hour, until he spotted the farm that belonged to his old friend, Johnny Jardine, who stood down on the bank of the river at the end of his hay field. The water slackened over a shallow bar of stones and the bateau bottomed out. A jam behind him already. What a goddamned jackpot, what a bunch of bank beavers, the so-called rivermen in charge of this operation. He paddled over to the bank and jumped over the side into the cold water. Right away the midges and blackflies were on him.

  “They rimracked the country, ain’t they Harry?” Johnny yelled from up high on the bank. “I didn’t think I’d see you out here.”

  Harry visited Johnny once a year during the drive. They had spent more than a few winters together north of the Dead. Between the two of them, nothing but the forest for a coat. Frozen ants falling out of the bark tasted like cranberries. Bunk down next to the horses to get rid of the lice. Wake up smelling of manure. Johnny seemed older than he had last year. He hunched over and leaned on a stick. Gravity pulled at his jowls and shoulders and wrists. A young man, the son or the grandson, stood next to him, the spit image of the Johnny that Harry remembered. Harry and Johnny were about the same age, but Harry didn’t think of himself as this age. This broken man.

  “Haven’t seen you in years now,” Johnny said, and Harry stared at him, confused. “Look there. The boys’ll have a terrible job. The logs’re ricked up just like Rose’s jackstraws.”

  Other guys on the bank squinted at Harry as he made his way out of the water.

  “I gotta git down the river,” Harry said. “Wife’s gonna have another baby.”

  “Member we used to say to her down in Vaughn come winter: ‘We don’t like the climate down south, time to head north.’ She’d say, ‘the climate of any place where you have regular work never did and never will suit you.’ She’s right there. I’ve rid logs down the b’ilin’est rapids of the Kennebec and never lost my head, but coming home in the spring after the drive was unsettlin’.”

  Harry handed over the whiskey, and they both took a snort.

  “What’s an old man like you doing snigging logs out of the woods?” Johnny said and looked out over the river at the four-foot pulp nosing around the boulders. “The boards that the old trees made—no wain, no knots, no bark showing, nothing under eight inches. Look at this wood—there’s nothing else left. Skunk spruce. That’s something, I can’t understand it, ruination.”

  Harry said, “I’m having a baby.”

  “You’re having a baby.” Johnny stepped back and leaned against a tree. His grandson or son—whatever he was—gripped his arm but otherwise kept staring into space, like a man holding a leash while his dog pissed.

  “She’s waiting on me now. I gotta go,” Harry said and climbed down the bank.

  Johnny laughed so hard he dropped his stick and had to lean on the arm of the kid, his head arched back, mouth open, laughing. No front teeth. A row of other guys standing on the bank laughed, too.

  “Hey Harry,” someone yelled from shore. “Did you really kill a guy in the woods with your caulked boots?”

  Harry looked up at the boys—different boys, different faces than he remembered, but the same boys. All this time and that’s all they remembered. Harry was twenty-three when that story started, and he wasn’t about to answer to it again. He climbed into his bateau and pushed off. The small wooden boat mixed in with the pulpwood and moved sideways downriver.

  “Is it true?” Melinda had asked years before when the story reached her of how he had gone into the woods with the PEI boy to fell trees and come back to camp alone.

  “I came back alone, but I didn’t do nothing to him,” he said. No one had believed him. They were cutting on the edge of a swamp in the middle of winter, he and the PEI boy pulling on the saw. Harry looked up as the giant spruce groaned and smashed down through the forest in front of him. The PEI boy had been standing behind him, but when Harry turned around, no one was there. The saw lay in the snow next to the man’s kennebeker and his spare socks and the kilhig pole they used to push the trees in the right direction. The rest of the camp searched the area just before dark. They twitched out the last tree Harry had felled and even some of the other sticks. They tried to dig around in the snow down to the duff, but it was as deep in some places as a man standing. You sure hid him good, someone said, and they gave up. There was no more time to search, with thousands of cords to cut before the drive in the spring.

  It was a dawn cup of boiling tea then. Biscuits, bean hole beans. Lugging the bateau over blowdowns and gullies and cradle knolls, through shallow water, always downriver. Someone would yell, Harry, your nose is freezing and you’d rub snow on it until the pain came back. Feet always wet, stubs, and always the peaveys, the long polls with the iron spike and the swinging iron hook that would clamp a log. The peavey would not let go, if you had log sense: tendencies of currents, effects of different volumes of water, places where jams formed, and the reason for them, key-log methods, and rollway breaking, and dam running. Moving the logs, and keeping out of the water when you could. An extra pair of socks better than almighty faith. Shallow water was fine, just get wet, but deep water swallowed men down.

  For years, running for Dan Bosse, Harry was the man to shoot a jam: out over the logs and find the key log in against a boulder, set the dynamite stick in and light the fuse, start running. Wait for the crash, the water spouting straight up in the air, and finally the rush forward—step on a lead log and sweep downriver. Dog the peavey into another log and wait until you hit the current. Then the log settled right down. You could ride it out.

  Unless you weren’t lucky. There was a kid, Hutchinson, in ’38 on Pollywog went under for twenty rods, but the water flung him up onto a granite shelf and he stood there unhurt, shaking his head, water pouring out of his mouth. Vernon was watching from a jill-poke log and as soon as Hutchinson popped out, Vernon’s log was swept away and later they found him downriver. A death call across the long swamp that night. Buried his body in a cask. Hung his boots from a tree. No one touched those boots, no one cut that tree. They rotted off the tree, or the tree rotted under them.

  Tonight he was going to sleep in his own b
ed. Melinda would be standing on the porch in her apron, in sight of both the river and the kitchen, where there was sure to be something other than beans and cakes and tea on the stove. He would toss his pannikin in the barn for the season, and eat off real plates, sleep in a real bed, no rollout in the morning. The warm skin at the nape of her neck.

  People standing on the banks waved to him, and he waved back with his peavey. Song like a hard rain through summer maples caught his ear—the pulpwood coming down—and inside this sound he had come to dread and wait on since he was sixteen was the call of someone’s voice. And not just someone but a woman, and not just a woman but Mrs. Clough, Melinda Clough, his wife, calling for him to hurry home. Harry looked downriver, thinking of Melinda strutting across the field behind their house just before he left for the drive yelling, “Harry Clough, I want a word with you.” As if he were one of their children. And it was never one word. Never.

  It started to rain, but Melinda wouldn’t get wet waiting on the bank in Vaughn. She had the trick, always did, of stepping between his thoughts.