by Lexi George
Sassy got out of the convertible and checked the backseat. The Dalmatian was gone. Probably off running the woods. She smoothed the seat belt creases in her dress. This was it, her first face-to-face with a mill employee. She would not throw up on her new shoes. She would not throw up on the man’s shoes.
She would not throw up. Period.
Taryn exited from the passenger side and leaned one slim hip against the sports car. Arms crossed, the huntress watched the fellow in the hard hat approach, an elegant predator in form-fitting jeans and sparkalicious boots. The man didn’t know it, but he was a gazelle and Taryn was a lioness.
Sassy guessed the man was somewhere in his forties. He had thick shoulders and a slight paunch, and was dressed in a pinstriped cotton shirt, jeans, and steel-toed work boots. He walked elbows out with one shoulder in the lead, John Wayne style. This was a man accustomed to being in charge.
“I’m Leroy Houston.” The man removed his hard hat and wiped his dark brow. His tightly curled hair was cut close to his head. The horseshoe mustache around his mouth was immaculate. “You ladies lost?”
“No.” Taryn moved not a muscle. “Are you?”
Houston’s mouth thinned. “I’m the plant manager. What do you want?”
Sassy smiled and stepped into the breach. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Houston.” She held out her hand. “I’m Sassy Peterson and this is Taryn . . . er . . . Kirvahni. We’ve come to tour the mill.”
Houston’s gaze flicked to Sassy’s outstretched hand. He didn’t take it.
His shoulders hunched in aggression. “This your buyer?”
“What?” Sassy was taken by surprise. “No. I’m not—”
“Don’t blow smoke up my ass, Miss Got Rocks,” Houston said. “Word’s out. You’re selling the mill. Some outsider’s going to new-fangle everything. Damn computers.” He spat into the dirt. “Put a lot of decent, hardworking folks out of jobs.”
He swung around to leave, but Taryn’s cool voice stopped him.
“You have the wrong of it, sir,” she said. “Sassy has done nothing to earn your rancor. To the contrary, she—”
“I’m not selling the mill, Mr. Houston.” Shooting Taryn a repressive glance, Sassy forced her charm to the surface, though her head pounded and there was a sour taste in her mouth. “I’m staying in Hannah to run things myself.”
Houston’s jaw sagged. If Sassy had suddenly sprouted nine heads like a hydra, the man couldn’t have looked more shocked.
“What the—But you don’t—”
“Know anything about running a timber mill?” Sassy opened her charm valve and dimpled at him. “That’s why I need your help. I can tell you know everything about the business.”
Houston was a tough sell, and it took a moment for Sassy’s allure to take effect. But at last his scowl faded. Sassy sent a prayer of thanks heavenward. For a moment, she’d feared her winsome widget was malfunctioning.
“I reckon I oughta,” Houston said. “Been at it since I was a tadpole. But I don’t need no woman underfoot.”
“What about her?” Taryn indicated the husky woman in the coveralls. “Is she not a female?”
Houston snorted. “That’s Tommie Lou Johnston. She don’t count. She’s a log scaler and a damn good one. Tommie Lou ain’t got a prissy bone in her body.”
“You mean like me,” Sassy said. “Don’t judge a book by its cover, Mr. Houston.”
“Your cover’s the problem.” Houston shoved his hard hat back. “You can’t traipse around a mill in a hanky and high heels. It ain’t safe and it’ll distract my men. Somebody’ll lose a finger.”
Sassy tapped her foot. “My dress is not a hanky, Mr. Houston. It’s perfectly respectable. Conservative, even.”
“You look like a Barbie doll.”
“Well, then, I guess you’ll have to find this Barbie doll something else to wear, because I am going to tour this mill today, Mr. Houston. With or without you.”
Houston growled in frustration. Rounding on his heel, he disappeared into the brick building.
Sassy and Taryn hurried after him. They entered the office and closed the door behind them, muffling the din from the yard. Away from the noise, Sassy’s headache eased and her stomach stopped roiling. Houston was down the hall talking to someone in an office. Probably on a quest to find her millish clothes, Sassy decided, or complaining about the la-di-da rich girl who was the new boss.
Maybe both.
She looked around with interest. This was it, the business heart of the place where the Peterson family fortune had started. The lobby was paneled and floored in heart pine the color of butterscotch. A deer head looked down at them from a wall with accusatory eyes.
Old black-and-white photos were grouped over a large leather couch in the waiting area. Sassy strolled over to examine the pictures. A small brass plate mounted on the largest photo identified it as the old Peterson Mill, a ramshackle wood and metal shed marooned in a sea of cut logs and mud. The faded photo to the left was of a mule-drawn wagon loaded with heavy logs.
Poor mules, Sassy thought.
In the photo on the other side of the center frame, two men stood in front of a half-hewn tree. A long, two-handed saw rested against the thick trunk. The gaping wound in the once mighty oak was obscene and disturbing.
With a shudder, Sassy moved on to the last frame, a recent photograph of Trey and her grandfather taken in the mill yard. Her brother was as she remembered him. Tall, handsome, and athletic. He stood slightly apart from their grandfather, unease in his stance and wary tension. Sassy studied Blake. Like Trey, he was handsome and exuded physical vitality, but there was something cold and reptilian about him. Uncle Gaudy, with his bayou wisdom, would say there was no soul behind those alligator eyes.
What had Mama been thinking, to leave Trey with such a man? A trickle of unease slid down Sassy’s spine. So verboten was their family divide that Sassy had never questioned Mama closely on the subject.
For shame. Sassy chided herself for being disloyal. Trey had kicked up a dust to stay with their grandparents. Mama had not, could not have known what Blake was. Her world was too small and insulated, her elegantly shod feet too firmly planted in norm reality for her to conceive of things like fairies and demons, and demonoids.
Norm reality. A window opened in Sassy’s mind and the truth she’d been avoiding flooded in. Her legs gave out and she sank onto the couch. For twenty-five years, she’d known—or thought she’d known with absolute certainty—her world and her place in it.
She’d lived a lie. She didn’t belong in Mama’s world any more than Blake Peterson. She’d never belonged. She was an orphan. No matter what happened with the mill, she could not go back to the life she had lived before.
The realization was like stepping into nothingness and falling, falling.
A woman’s voice yanked her out of her tailspin.
“Miss Peterson?”
An older woman swished down the hall in a broomstick skirt and a lightweight knit sweater. Houston clomped behind her.
“I’m Lucy Barnett.”
“Trey’s secretary—yes. We’ve spoken on the phone.” Sassy rose and shook the woman’s hand. “Thank you for staying after Trey’s death. I hope you will continue to work here. I’ve got a lot to learn.”
The worry lines around Lucy Barnett’s eyes eased. “Thank you. I’d like to stay. The men will be relieved to hear you aren’t selling. Rumors are flying. They’ve been worried.”
“Ms. Barnett—”
“Call me Lucy, please.”
“Lucy,” Sassy amended. “I’d like you to meet my friend, Taryn.”
Lucy saw the huntress and jumped. “Goodness me, I didn’t see you standing there. How do you do?”
“How do I do what?” Taryn raised her brows.
“Foreigners. Pay her no mind, Lucy. She ain’t from around here.” Houston stomped to the door. “Lucy’s found you something to wear. I’ll be back in ten minutes. See that you’re ready. I got work t
o do.”
He slammed the door behind him as he left.
Lucy motioned toward the hall. “My office is this way, Miss Peterson, if you’ll follow me.”
“Please, call me Sassy. My mother calls me Sarah Elizabeth when I’m in trouble.”
Lucy’s eyes twinkled. “Sassy, then.” She looked at Sassy’s high heels. “Goodness, you’ll ruin your beautiful shoes. I found a pair of boots in a closet the other day. I think they may fit.”
The secretary turned to Taryn with a smile. “I see you’re already wearing boots, and such pretty ones, too. My youngest granddaughter would love those.”
“A granddaughter? How lovely,” Sassy said. “How old is she?”
“Thirteen.”
Taryn muttered something under her breath.
Ten minutes later, Sassy and Taryn were outfitted in twill coveralls with front and back pockets and concealed snaps at the waist. The garments were stiff and musty from disuse. Taryn’s was olive green. The coverall was a trifle large on her. It didn’t matter. With her fiery coloring and leggy beauty, the huntress was a model on a catwalk, especially in the sparkly boots.
Sassy’s garment was a yucky safety orange, and the boots were ready for the garbage can, not the runway. They were cracked and stiff with age. She turned them upside down and shook them. Bits of dried insole, dirt, and leaves hit the floor. A spider was knocked loose and scurried away.
“Where did you say you found these boots?” Sassy asked.
“In the store room under some boxes,” Lucy said. “I think they may have belonged to your brother when he was a kid.”
Sending up a prayer that she would be spared some deadly, pernicious form of foot funk, Sassy shoved her feet into the boots. She rolled up the sleeves and pants legs of the coverall. It was miles too big, a hopeless bag. Her fashion sense shrieked at such an affront, but what could she do?
A bouquet of fresh wildflowers on Lucy’s desk caught her eye.
“Lucy, may I have one of your flowers?” Sassy asked.
“Help yourself.”
Sassy plucked a daisy from the vase and stuck the flower through the buttonhole of her front pocket. There. That was better. Spirits lifted, she thumped into the lobby with Taryn gliding along beside her. Leroy Houston was waiting for them . . . and so was the Dalmatian. Trey was curled up on a sofa cushion like he owned the joint. Which, Sassy supposed, he did, in a manner of speaking. The dog lifted his head when they entered the room.
Sassy waited for Houston’s reaction to the animal on the couch, but the manager didn’t seem to notice the dog.
He stroked his mustache and looked Sassy up and down.
“Good God A’mighty,” Houston said. “You’re rolling around like an English pea in a brown paper sack in that thing.”
“Leroy, you’ll make her feel self-conscious,” Lucy scolded. “It’s what we had.”
Lucy, Sassy noted, didn’t notice the dog, either.
Trey stretched and jumped down from the couch. Without a backward glance, he trotted out the door—the closed door.
Houston handed Sassy and Taryn bright yellow hard hats that said Peterson Lumber on them.
“Put these on,” he said. “OSHA says.”
Waving good-bye to Lucy, Sassy and Taryn left with Houston to begin their tour. As soon as Sassy stepped outside, she was blasted with noise and smells. Wham. Her headache and nausea returned full force.
Houston struck out across the yard and Taryn followed, her long legs allowing her to keep up. Sassy lowered her head and plunged after them, though the noise and smells of the lumber yard pulsed around her in sickening waves.
Houston stopped outside the main shed. “Peterson Lumber has forty-eight employees.” There was pride in his voice. “We got sawyers, edger-men, spotters, trimmermen, lumber graders, chain pullers, to name a few. Every man jack of ’em got sawdust and wood sap in their veins.” He pointed to one of the Caterpillars Sassy had observed upon their arrival. “The debarked logs are moved from the log deck to the live deck with a log loader.”
He indicated a column of smoke coming from the boiler. “The stripped bark is sent to a boiler that produces steam used later in the drying process. After the logs are debarked and placed on the live deck they move to either the pony rig band saw or the head rig band saw, depending on size. Pony rig’s for smaller logs. Head rig’s for the big ones. Wasted wood is wasted money. Our sawyers make sure there’s as little left over as possible. After the logs are cut, they go into what we call the infeed conveyer.”
He motioned at the noisy main building. “Let’s go inside where you can see the saws at work.”
He led Sassy and Taryn up a narrow flight of metal stairs and into the mill. The din inside was a physical thing, and the smell of fractured wood coated Sassy’s mouth, nose, and sinuses until she thought she would choke. Men in goggles and hard hats stood at the end of a huge contraption. A log screamed as it was fed into the blades.
“That’s our big band saw,” Houston yelled in Sassy’s ear. “We call her Fran. Call her something else when she’s acting up that I won’t repeat. Lately, that’s been a lot. She’s forty-three feet long and eleven inches wide. All bitch and no boobs—that’s our Fran. Keeps our sawfile on his toes.”
Sassy nodded, clinging to the metal safety railing for dear life. She was woozy and sick, and she longed to run screaming from the building.
“The logs go into the band mill,” he continued, unaware of Sassy’s discomfort. “The center piece is called a cant. The cant goes on down the belt and is put through an edger. The edgerman adjusts the saws as the cant enters the edger to get the maximum value out of the lumber. The sideboards on the cants fall off for processing. See?”
Sassy swallowed the taste of wood and forced her gaze off the railing’s chipped green paint and onto the drama below. The debarked logs trundled down the conveyer and into the cruel teeth of the saws. Her knuckles whitened. Death, she was looking at death. This was a charnel house where once-vibrant living trees were sliced to bits.
“From the edger, the boards go to a trim saw,” Houston said. “That’s where your spotters come in. The spotters move lumber away from the edger to keep things moving smoothly. The trimmer-man decides what length to cut the boards.” He waved his hand. “The bits and pieces left over drop through the grates to the outside slasher conveyor. From the trim saw, boards go to the grading table, where the graders grade it and mark it, check it for moisture and classify for drying. It’s then sorted and put into holders. The boards then go to the stacker line where these little pieces of wood called ‘stickers’ are stuck between the layers.”
“What is the purpose of these stickers?” Taryn asked.
Though she did not raise her voice, her words could easily be heard above the racket.
“They help with the air flow,” Houston said. “So the lumber dries better.”
To Sassy’s profound relief, Houston turned and went back down the stairs. Sassy stumbled after him, eager to put the horror of the saws behind her.
Taryn caught up with her at the foot of the stairs. “Sassy, what troubles you? You look as though you have eaten a barrel of green apples.”
Sassy clutched Taryn’s arm. “Oh, Taryn.” Sassy’s mouth trembled and she blinked back tears. “I’ve made the most awful mistake. I can’t do this. I can’t run the mill.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Taryn stared at Sassy. “Whate’er do you mean?”
Sassy wrung her hands. “I thought this job would be about nature, and fresh air, and growing things, but it’s about death.” She shuddered. “Look around. There are corpses everywhere. They’re grinding the bodies to make money. It’s horrible. It makes me want to throw up.”
“Death is part of life,” Taryn said gently. “Trees die from insects and disease and rot. Lightning strikes the forest and sets it ablaze, leaving a charred wasteland. New growth springs from the ashes and the woodlands return, richer than before. Trees are used fo
r firewood and shelter, for furniture and weapons—in countless ways in this world and others.”
Sassy removed her hard hat and stared at it. “You’re right. I know you’re right. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Houston gestured impatiently. “You two coming?”
“Hold but a moment, good sir.” Taryn gave Sassy a shrewd, assessing look. “I suspect your fae blood is at the heart of your distress. Many fairies are tree shepherds. That would explain your extreme reaction to the milling process.”
The fairies; of course it was the fairies. It was a relief to know the cause of her discomfort, but one glaring fact remained.
“Shiitake mushrooms,” Sassy said. “How am I going to run a mill when it makes me physically ill?”
“Perhaps you should reconsider and sell to your aunt.”
The thought was tempting, oh, so tempting.
Sassy shook her head. “I can’t. People will lose their jobs.” She slapped the hard hat back on. “I’m not going to let that happen.”
“Well spoken. I applaud your courage and resolve.”
“Oh, pooh,” Sassy said.
Now that Sassy was away from the saws, she felt a little better and they continued the tour. They made a circuit around the rest of the yard with Houston showing them the large green containers where the wood chips were housed and the huge sawdust sheds.
“Used to be you couldn’t give sawdust away,” Houston said. “We’d have to burn it or dump it. But it’s used for all kinds of things these days, by dairy farmers and to make particleboard and such. Price has more than doubled. Something that used to be a dang nuisance makes us a handy profit now.” He looked around with satisfaction. “Every byproduct of the timber that’s brought through our gates gets sold but the steam from the boilers and the shriek of the saws. Ain’t figured how to sell them yet, but give me time. I will.”