by Melinda Minx
“Surprise?” Noah says, rushing in. “Aunt Jane, what is it?”
“If I tell you,” she says, “then it’s not a surprise, is it?”
He stares up at her, biting his lip. “How long until I see it?”
“One hour,” she says. “So we have to get ready. It’s an outside surprise.”
“Do I get to go sledding?” Noah asks, jumping up and down.
“You go sledding almost every day, sweetie, so that wouldn’t be a surprise.”
He looks almost disappointed. I scruff his hair. “Don’t worry,” I say, looking up at Jane. “I’m sure whatever it is will be more fun than sledding. Right Jane?”
She beams, smiling like a maniac.
We get in the car, and I fall asleep as we drive. Car rides always put me to sleep, even if I slept plenty the night before.
I wake up as soon as the car stops, and I see we are in a big open grass parking area.
“Where are we?” Noah asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Where are we?”
“If you could read the sign we passed earlier,” Jane says to Noah, “then you’d know!” She turns to me. “And if you could stay awake in the car, you’d know, too.”
“We’re here, Jane,” I say. “Just tell us. And please tell me it’s not the lumberjack competition.”
“It’s not the lumberjack competition,” she says.
We get out of the car and I take Noah by the hand. I see groups of people walking toward a big ticket booth, and I see some kids holding plastic axes.
“Why are those kids pretending to be lumberjacks if this isn’t the lumberjack competition?” I ask.
“They probably are coming from there and got excited,” Jane says.
“But the competition is today and hasn’t started yet, so they couldn’t have come from there,” I say.
“What’s lumberjack mean?” Noah asks.
“For someone who doesn’t want to go to the lumberjack competiton,” Jane says, “you sure know a heck of a lot about it!”
Jane leans into the ticket booth. “Three tickets. Two adults, one child. I have a discount for a Jane Murphy. M-U-R-P-H-Y. Murphy.”
“Murphy?” I ask grabbing her arm. “That’s not our last name.”
The ticket lady scowls up at us. “So you’re not Jane Murphy?”
“I am,” Jane says, elbowing me.
“What are these tickets for?” I ask.
“The Grand Lumberjack National Championship,” the ticket lady says in a very bored voice.
“Jane!” I snap, grabbing Noah’s hand. “I don’t want to go to this!”
“I don’t blame ya,” the ticket lady says.
“Come on!” Jane says. “It will be fun! Noah, lumberjacks are big strong guys who can chop trees down with their bare hands!”
“I think they use axes,” the ticket lady says. “You want the tickets or not, Jane Murphy?”
“Yes,” Jane says, throwing her credit card onto the counter.
“Just you then,” I say, turning around.
I pull Noah away, and when I look up, I slam into someone.
He’s big, and solid, and--I look up and gasp. He’s Jack.
Jack scowls at me, but behind his eyes is something else. Something I don’t even deserve to see.
My jaw drops open.
“No sister, Jane Murphy?” Jack says, looking over to Jane. Ignoring me.
“I don’t know why you two are doing this,” Jane says, “but--”
“Mommy?” Noah blurts out. “Is he a lumberjack?”
Jack looks down at his son, for the first time. Then up at me and Jane.
“Yeah, I’m a lumberjack,” he says, still looking at us.
He mouths two words to us. “Is he?” He points to his chest.
I nod.
“What’s your name?” Jack asks, squatting down to meet Noah eye to eye.
“Noah,” he says.
“I’m Jack.” He reaches out a hand.
“Shake it,” Jane says.
Noah reaches his hand out and touches his father’s. Jack smiles. “Strong grip. Maybe you can be a lumberjack, too?”
“I wanna be a sledder. Or a penguin.”
“Those are good jobs, too,” Jack says. “You like going sledding?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well,” Jack says, “I want to talk to you again later, and then maybe we can go sledding, but I think I need to talk to your mom.”
9
Jack
As soon as Jane gets Noah out of sight, anger flares up from every inch of my body. My face burns red.
“What. The. Fuck,” I let out in a flat voice. “Elisabeth. Is that even your name?”
She breaks into tears. She tries to wrap her arms around me, but I push her away.
“You won’t keep me from my son,” I say. “You tried to hide him, but now--”
“I don’t deserve your trust,” she chokes out. “But...I can’t tell you why I did it.”
“Did what?” I ask. “Why you hid the kid from me? Or why you stole my father’s ring?”
Her face breaks up again, and tears stream down her face. “Both.”
“Forget it,” I say. “I’ll deal with you only enough to spend time with my son. I’ll fight for custody, and--”
“Jack,” she says, grabbing my arm, “I’ll let you see him. You’re here for how long? You can see him all you want. You don’t have to deal with me if you don’t want to. Okay?”
He scowls.
“Just one thing,” she says. “Okay? It’s really, really important. Not for me, but for Noah. You can’t tell anyone about him. You can’t--”
“You think I’m ashamed of my own son?” he snaps. “I’ll tell whoever I damn well please!”
I can’t fucking believe her. How does she think she can take my son away from me? And now that I’ve caught her, she dares to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do?
But I look at her, and there’s real terror in her eyes. She’s truly afraid of something. It’s the kind of fear that only a mother can have for her child.
“Just tell me,” I say.
“I’ll tell you before you leave,” she says. “I just have to...I have to make sure it’s safe.”
“You’re not tricking me again?” I ask. “This is your last chance, Elisabeth. I’m not letting you play one over on me again. If Noah didn’t look so much like me, I wouldn’t even believe you when you say he’s mine.”
“I promise, Jack,” she says. “I’m telling the truth. I’ll tell you the whole story...soon. Just spend time with Noah. Get to know him...”
I’d have gotten to know him years ago, if she had fucking told me.
She points through the gate, toward the competition.
I scoff. “Like I can focus on that now?”
She smiles. “Noah doesn’t know what a lumberjack is. So show him.”
I start to consider it. This is the first impression I get to make on my boy. I could choose not to compete, to just go sledding with him. Or I could show him what I do and then go sledding with him. It’s his first time to see something like this, and seeing his Dad win the competition would make him proud of me, wouldn’t it?
“You think he’d like it?” I ask. “I could just take him sledding instead, he--”
“He goes sledding every single day,” Elisabeth says. “He can take a day off. Show him how good you are at lumberjacking.”
I nod. “All right, I will.” I look her over. God, she still looks fucking incredible. Even all bundled up. If I thought solely with my dick right now, I might find myself on top of her again. But this is not the time to think with my dick, despite what I was thinking just earlier today.
“I beat myself up for a long time over you,” I say. “Normally when I slept with a stranger, I kept the ring locked away. So why didn’t I with you?”
“Do you often sleep with strangers?” she asks.
I flare up with anger. No. Not since that night. At least n
ot nearly as much.
I let out a dry laugh. “What business is that of yours? Do you often steal from strangers? Or a better question, how did you choose me as your target? I kept wondering that. Maybe at first you were just flirting with me for fun, but then you saw the ring? You decided to knock out two birds with one stone? Have some fun with me, then make bank off it?”
“I…” She looks down, “I’ll tell you soon, I swear.”
This fucking woman.
“Why can’t you just tell me now?” I ask, throwing my arms up. “I always wanted to think that you had a good, legit reason for doing it. I still want to believe that, so just tell me it.”
“I can’t tell you now,” she says, “Because it affects my sister, too. I have to find a way to...to prepare her. And you. I will tell you, Jack. It’s more dangerous for Noah at this point if I don’t. If you believe one thing about me, believe that I would give my life to protect him.”
Her face is serious. I believe her. Even though I swore I never would believe her again. But that was before I knew she was the mother of my child.
“Alright,” I say. “I’m gonna go win this tournament. For my son.”
I’m not some tournament amateur anymore. Chumps like Paul Bunyan are beneath me now. They wouldn’t even dare compete with me at this point. But this is the grand championship, and everyone else here is close to or at my level. I’ll have to bring my A-game to cut through the competition. To show my son what his dad can do.
The first event is log rolling. It was by far my weakest event when I started competing. It has the absolute least to do with real-life lumberjacking. The justification for it is that lumberjacks used to cut a tree down, then throw it into the river for it to float downstream to the sawmill. A lumberjack would guide the log by riding it like a boat, with oars and all. They would at times--supposedly--run along the log to guide it, like in a fucking cartoon.
Some genius decided this would be the perfect event for competitive lumberjacking, and rather than actually guiding the log around, two lumberjacks have to stand on the same log and try to force each other off it, into the water.
If I wanted to win, I had to master it. I drilled hard, day in and day out for months. I forced Hutch and Sawyer to practice with me, neither of those two wanted to keep competing after the first time. But I made them run the logs with me, knocking them off into the water hundreds of times.
It’s still not my best event, but I’m damn good at it all the same. I check the bracket and recognize the name of my competitor. Yannick. One of the fucking Canadians from my first competition in Seattle.
I walk out to the pier and Yannick is already there. The crowd has to gather around on the shore by the pier for this event, and since it’s a minor event, not everyone even bothers to come all the way out to watch. A lot of people are just getting beers or chowing down on some food rather than watching the lower bracket log rolling competition. I do see the crowd of spectators is bigger than usual, since the word going around is that a lot of people have money on me winning this whole thing. They want to see if their bets are going to pay off.
I see Elisabeth, Jane, and Noah near the front of the pier. Noah...my son. It’s unbelievable, and fucking Elisabeth? She’s the mother of my child? Every time I look at her, I get a churning feeling in the pit of my stomach. My heart races and my adrenaline surges. Even after all this time, and even though I only spent one night with her. Even after she fucking betrayed me--twice now.
Well, the jury’s still out. She’s promised to tell me why she did what she did. I realize I can forgive almost anything, especially if it means getting to be a father to my son. Being at least on cordial terms with his mother will be important.
“Hey there, buddy,” Yannick says, grinning. “Up in Alaska, eh? You drive here? Get to drive through B.C.?”
“B.C.?” I ask, still thinking of Noah and Elisabeth. I’m not feeling like small talk.
“British Columbia,” he says, smiling. “Canada.”
“I flew.”
“Ah,” he says. “That’s too bad. You’re gonna fly again--right into the water--when I run you off this here log.”
I laugh. “You’ve lost your Canadian manners, eh?”
“I’m a hardened competitor now, Jack, when I throw you into the freezing cold water, I’m only going to apologize once.”
“I’m American,” I say, getting up in his face. “I’m not going to apologize at all.”
“No need to, buddy, because I’m staying on that log.”
“Ready?” the judge asks.
We both nod.
The dumbest part of the log run is getting both competitors onto the log. We have to help each other onto the log, and the judge holds a long wooden stick out for us. After all the trash talking, it takes out a lot of the bite as Yannick and I have to work together to stabilize the log, and make sure we both have even footing. When the judge blows the whistle, we have to start running together, and only after we both are stable and have control can we actually attempt to de-log each other.
If I false start, or reverse direction before Yannick is stable, we’ll have to redo the whole thing.
In smaller competitions, the log roll is usually held in a small and shallow pool. It’s less of a hassle to reset after each fall, and it’s also less dangerous. It’s also way less exciting, so in the grand finals, we compete in the real water.
Once we both have a solid foothold, the judge pushes the stick, and the log drifts slowly out into the crystal clear water.
I stare him down, and he narrows his eyes at me. The time for trash talking is over, all that matters now is action.
The judge starts a countdown, and I tighten up every muscle in my body, lowering myself down for extra stability.
“Three, two, one,” the judge shouts, and then the whistle cuts through the air.
As standard, Yannick and I start running the log in the same direction, starting slow, then picking up speed.
“Stable!” the judge shouts. “Three, two, one!” The whistle blows again, and now it’s on.
Yannick immediately flicks his left foot into the water, kicking up a big splash of ice cold water. I ignore the water, and run the log in the opposite direction to try to quickly knock him off.
The water hits me in the face as I start to roll, and Yannick moves in unison with me. He predicted how I’d react.
As the water hits my eyes and fucks up my vision, Yannick speeds up. I move my legs faster to keep up, and then I jump.
Yannick’s eyes widen as the log spins out of his control, I see his feet slipping.
Now I have to stick the landing. If we both fall, I don’t get a point.
I hit the log, and my boots struggle to grip, but I run with the turning of the log, and I stabilize myself even as Yannick plunges into the icy water.
I look over to the pier, and everyone is cheering. Noah is propped up onto Elisabeth’s shoulders, and I can’t make out his face from so far out, but he’s definitely watching me.
“That’s a lumberjack,” I whisper to myself.
Yannick starts to swim toward the pier, and I have to roll the log with my feet to get it toward the pier. It’s best two out of three, but the advantage of not falling into the water is huge. Yannick is going to struggle from here.
I hop off the log and back onto the pier. I can see Noah clearer now, he’s staring up at me in wide-eyed amazement. I’ve never much cared what anyone thought of me, but my own son? Fuck, if it doesn’t feel good to have him look at me like that.
I wave to him, and he shyly buries his face into Elisabeth’s hair. She laughs.
I grin over at them.
Yannick and I get back on the log, and once it is spun up and the whistle blows again, I turn my whole body left--and I sprint.
Yannick is still facing forward, so he has to try to match my speed running sideways. He can’t keep up, and the moment I see his shoulders hint that he’s about to turn his body, I quickly hop and tu
rn into a one-eighty. I spring hard the moment my boots bite into the wood, and just as Yannick lands to run in the opposite direction of me, I’ve already started spinning the log. Now he has to run backward, and he tries, but it’s too slow.
His feet fly up into the air, and he falls ass first into the water.
10
Elisabeth
“I wanna be a lumberjack,” Noah says, tugging on my arm.
Jack throws an axe, and it slams into the bullseye on the tree.
Noah emulates the throwing motion.
“I thought you wanted to be a penguin,” Jane says.
“Lumberjack.”
“Sledder?” I ask. “Maybe a sledder with a bunch of cute dogs in--”
“No!” Noah says, crossing his arms.
“Looks like Jack won another event,” Jane says. “He’s going to the grand finals.”
I sigh. I’m happy for him, but I’m incredibly stressed out.
Jane grabs my arm and leans close into my ear. “You gotta tell me what’s going on, Liz.”
I whisper back to her, impatience leaking into my voice, “I’ll tell you both, okay? After this tournament is over, we’ll go out to eat, and I’ll tell you both--together--what happened. Okay?”
“Fine,” Jane says. “You think you’d tell your own sister first, though.”
I roll my eyes.
“What is hard hitting?” Jane asks.
“It’s when they hit stuff really hard,” I say sarcastically.
“Come on,” Jane says, kicking my foot.
I look over to Jane and Noah, and I try to explain it so Noah can understand, too.
“This is the last big event today,” I say. “Whoever wins this, is the big winner. But even getting second place is very, very good.”
I’m trying to make sure Noah won’t be disappointed if his father doesn’t win. I honestly don’t even know how much Noah sees Jack as “his father.” He’s never had a father, how can he really know at this point what it means for Jack to be his father? Jack will have to stick around, spend time with him, and get to know him. But Noah is pretty into this lumberjack thing, and he seems to be cheering for Jack--the only lumberjack Noah has spoken to so far.