The wind dropped off the jagged backbone of the Gore and Park Ranges and came funneling through the mountain passes, Cameron, Willow Creek, Milner, Berthoud, Loveland, each a natural wind tunnel, whistling down the snaking valleys of the Front Range at forty nautical miles an hour miles an hour and still picking up speed.
The fast-developing windstorm soon topped sixty miles an hour, gale force, scouring the treetops like a million freight trains.
As the tempest rose, so did the roar, until the shriek of the wind became a screaming crescendo that drowned out the puny wail of chainsaws.
One by one, Jacques’ loggers shut off their saws and stood watching the freakish wind that had enveloped the forest around them. What else could a man do but watch? It was too dangerous to work under such conditions.
Along with the gale now rose a blanket of air-born dust and debris. Weirdly, it appeared to hang suspended above the valley like a yellow apparition, an apron of dust that muddied the skies and darkened the already dim sun as it spiraled in broad eddies above the treetops.
Here and there shallow-rooted lodgepole pines began to go down with a sharp wrenching and snapping of roots.
As the wind gusted to seventy miles an hour, earth and sky became a maddening blur of motion, a million points of distraction. The devilish wind was its own species of conundrum.
Cyclonic dust wormed its way into Tom’s eyes, gouging his ears and face like stinging nettles, almost blinding him. Around him the forest had become a chaos of noise and movement. Tree crowns and branches whipsawed crazily, every which way.
The crew had already carved a broad swath of stumpland through the forested valley, amounting to about half of the 350-acre right-of-way. In places, only a narrow strip of timber remained on its feet. Miles of forest “edge” had also been hacked through the remaining timber, all of which now stood unnaturally exposed. Upon the anvil of this remnant forest the deafening gale now fell like a hammer.
As the blow surpassed seventy miles an hour, deep-rooted centuries old mossy-barked firs and behemoth spruces began crashing over. Soon giant trees were going down like dominoes. A big trunk would crash against another tree, khe-thunk, triggering a chain reaction – an explosion of popping roots and broken limbs as trees shin-boned one against another. Sometimes three or four tangled trunks would go down together in a collapsing shower of broken branches and flying bark.
On every side, ancient trees heaved and groaned like wide sails straining to the limit before the mast, and beyond.
Tom initially had lowered his head to the storm, gritting his teeth as he attempted to stay focused on the work. But when a big tree went down too close for comfort, he packed it in. It was time to get out of the woods. Hastily he gathered up his gear and made for his pickup. But it was not easy going. The footing was terrible. The skid trails now were non-functional, blocked by a jumble of downed trees jack-strawed every which way. Stems and branches lay piled in heaps; and the wind was still rising.
The loggers were a sight as they scrambled to safety, picking their way through the slash and fallen trees, dodging falling debris as they struggled to hang onto their gear and tin hats. The men’s heads kept bobbing up and down as their eyes darted back and forth from the uncertainties underfoot to the dangers above. Their saws were balanced precariously on their shoulders. It was a perilous business.
Jacques waited on the landing. Like the rest, he had one hand firmly on his hard hat. The boss acknowledged each one as they came in.
“Anyone see Mike?” he said, squinting into the storm.
“He’s coming, boss. He’s right behind me.”
“OK.”
From the relative safety of the landing the men watched like dumb statues as the forest disintegrated before their eyes. The timber was being torn to pieces. Awe and fear of the unbridled power of Nature was etched on every face.
“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” one logger mumbled over and over again, like a broken record.
After awhile they picked up their saws and quietly returned to the trucks. There was nothing to do but retreat to camp and wait it out. Wherever the forest canopy remained intact the forest itself offered a measure of protection.
But their trials were not over, not yet. On the way to camp they were compelled to clear fallen debris from the road using their saws and, on several occasions, a winch.
The Preacher came within a whisker of not arriving when his truck sustained a direct hit from a falling lodgepole pine. Luckily, the roof on the rider’s side took the brunt of the impact. Dipstick was luckier still. At the last moment he had decided to hitch a ride back to camp with Jimmy instead of with the Preacher and so averted a terminal headache.
The near miss turned weirdly comical when they found the Preacher standing in the road waving his arms and talking animatedly to himself, as he was wont to do. “She was in pretty poor shape to begin with,” he nervously pointed out, apparently trying to sound optimistic. It was true enough. The old truck was a jalopy. Jimmy and Dipstick cut the lodgepole free, dragged it off in sections and dumped them along the side of the road.
“See if she’ll turn over,” Charlie said.
“Yeah, give it a crank.”
The front windshield had partially popped out and the door on the rider’s side was tweaked and wouldn’t close. But when the Preacher – he was jittery – finally settled down and climbed inside the motor turned over and sounded just fine.
“Hoo-ray!”
“What do you know?”
“How about that!”
The cab was a problem, however. The crumpled roof made it impossible to sit upright in the cockpit.
“That’ll give you wry neck.”
The Preacher rummaged around in the back and began pounding on the roof from the inside with a ball peen hammer. When that failed to produce results he lay on the seat with his big clodhoppers in the air and kicked the roof up; not much but enough that he could sit behind the wheel without scraping his head. He then pounded out the rest of the windshield.
“It’s gonna be drafty.”
The vehicle was a wreck. Any other man would have written it off. But the Preacher showed every intention of pressing it back into service. The situation was beyond absurd and the bystanders could not resist wagging their fingers at him as they offered advice.
“Now fix that flat and you’re done,” said Sourpuss.
That evening, the crew made hilarious small talk of the Preacher’s cockamamy rig. The tomfoolery had a sharp edge of mockery.
The windstorm finally played out during the night.
But no one was laughing the next morning when they discovered Mike Garity’s rig still parked near the landing. They found him fifty yards from safety. Mike was sitting on the ground leaning against a fir tree, both legs extended. His eyes were open, set in a perpetual stare, a slight frown on his face. Otherwise he looked quite relaxed, as if he had sat down to rest a spell. A three-foot shard of wood was sticking out of the top of his skull. An ugly line of coagulated blood ran down one side of his face.
“Now, he can rest for eternity,” stammered Thurston.
“The poor boy never knew what hit him.”
“Nope. Probably never felt a thing.”
“Damn. He almost made it.”
“Wasn’t wearin’ no hard hat.”
“It wouldn’t a’ made any difference,” Jacques said quietly.
“Yeah. Broke his neck sure.”
Mike’s chainsaw was on the ground beside him, his hand still gripping the handlebar. The grip was so fierce that when the time came to move the body they had the devil of a time separating the chainsaw from the man.
“You know,” said Charlie, later, “it’s almost as if old Garity wanted to take his Husky with him into … the hereafter.”
“Yeah, like he knowed he was going to need it.”
“Damn it all.”
“Makes you wonder, don’t it?”
There was more wind that evening. Later
, it turned bitter cold.
Sometime in the night Tom awakened with a case of the shakes, his sleeping bag soaked with sweat. Of the bad dream he remembered nothing apart from the stench of death – and the vacant eyes that gave him no peace.
TEN
Their affair in Florida had been short but intense, six days shacked up in a motel room. Later, Tom often wondered about her, and why she picked him. After all, he had failed to defend her honor.
But for his decision to go south, they would never have crossed paths. He certainly had no plans to winter in Florida, that year. The trip was born of necessity, the mistress of invention.
After the early fall shut down, Tom found himself casting about for work; just another unemployed logger with grit under his nails.
Only there was no work. The economy had tanked in September. The country was in the midst of the deepest recession in half a century; in part, the result of a worldwide oil glut.
The rest of St. Clair’s crew took the easy out. The loggers kicked back to collect unemployment checks until the spring thaw hopefully brought better days, all of them, that is, except Tom Lacey, who failed to qualify for relief. He had not yet paid enough into the general fund to meet the minimum state requirement. He came up just short.
So, he joined the ranks of other out-of-work men and queued up for day labor. He also scanned the job boards, hands in his pockets. For two weeks he battled boredom waiting for something to turn up.
Finally, something did. From a posted handbill he learned about a treeplanting company based in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The outfit was recruiting for large planting contracts in Florida and Georgia. The poster read: “No experience necessary.” Tom felt he might as well try for it.
He put a call through to the home office and was hired on the spot. Soon, he would be back at work. Start-up was the twentieth of November.
The only remaining issue, the matter of shelter, was solved when he chased down a used camper shell. He picked it up for a song, mounted it on the back of his pickup, rigged up a two-burner cook-stove, installed an ice cooler, and presto! His truck had become a house-on-wheels.
Tom thanked his stars that he was footloose, without family ties and obligations, free to follow the work, wherever. He put his saw and gear into cold storage at Red Callahan’s – Red lived in the Fort; and the night before he left, he gathered with some of the men at the Town Pump for a send-off. They thought the treeplanting gambit was hilarious.
“Tom the treeplanter,” croaked Shorty. “Hehehe..”
“Yeah, Johnny fuckin’ Appleseed!”
“He’s going to even up accounts,” said Dipstick. “An’ pay off his karmic debts.”
“Bullshit,” Tom said. “It has nothing to do with karma. I have to eat too, same as you bums.”
They toasted him a last round.
“Here’s to the scholar.”
“Nobody gets out alive,” said Charlie.
“Don’t worry. Tom’ll be back. He loves dropping them big ones...”
“Oh yeah he does,” said Red.
The heads nodded. They knew the kid would return in the spring. He was hooked; once a logger, always a logger.
He pulled out of Fort Collins on the tenth of November headed east, start of a week-long road trip. He spent three difficult days in Amarillo with his last surviving uncle, T.R., who was failing after a series of debilitating strokes. After paying his respects he said good-bye, they both knew for the last time, and hop-skipped to Springfield, Missouri for a reunion with former college friends. Two days later he spent a night in Montgomery with his crazy aunt Catherine who had hounded three husbands into early graves. The last night he slept on a lonely beach outside Destin, Florida. The rest was a jaunt. He made the work rendezvous at a designated state park east of Gainesville, Florida, with time to spare. The temperature in sunny Florida was a balmy sixty-five degrees, shirt sleeve weather; the first of many surprises to come.
ELEVEN
Tallie was in the crowd that first morning, though Tom failed to notice her, when a lanky man with a beard stepped up and introduced himself.
“Good morning, good morning. My name is Ed Conyers and I hail from Arkansas. From up around Fayetteville. If you are familiar with that country you know that up there we’re all good old boys.” He paused to twitters of laughter. It was good form, Conyers knew, to season the straight-talk with humor, especially on the first day. No point in scaring them off.
He continued, “On behalf of Reforestation Incorporated I want to welcome y’all to the wonderful world of treeplanting. It’s going to be my job to serve as your crew boss. For the next few months we’ll spend most of our time together. The season will run through next March. I’ll tell you what, it’s going to be an adventure and a’ expect by the end of this week we’ll be one big happy family around here. Whose golden retriever?”
“Mine.”
“And who are you, suh?”
“Bill Nelson.”
“Pleased to meet you. Nice lookin’ dog.”
“Thanks. His name is Amazon.”
“Where you from, Bill?”
“Madison, Wisconsin.”
“Good to have you aboard.” Conyers continued, “By my count there ought to be nineteen of us, twenty countin’ Amazon.” A lone laugh.
Conyers did a roll call. As he went through the names each one raised an arm or said “Here!” or “Yo.” The crew included three women.
As he looked them over Conyers was already having reservations. Several men had returned from the previous season. Thank heaven for that. Experienced planters made his job easier. As for the rest, they would not know which end of a seedling was up. He would have to start from square one. It was obvious that most of the new recruits were on the rebound from the bad economy. Treeplanting required no previous experience and so, was a last resort for men down on their luck.
Conyers frowned as he looked them over. They ranged from long haired hippies and back-to-the-land types from the coast of Maine to more conservative men from the deep south, including several rough-looking drifters. Ne’er-do-wells. He knew the sort. He had seen their like before. Too many times. Such men made poor treeplanters, and often spelled trouble.
“OK. Looks like we’re present and accounted for,” Conyers said in his slow southern drawl. At a nod, one of the veterans started passing out the standard issue equipment. In addition to the hoedad the gear included a pair of tree bags to hold the seedlings. The double bags were part of a belt-and-shoulder harness designed to hang at hip level.
“The bags and hoedad will cost each of you seventy-five bucks,” Conyers told them. “That will be docked from your first paycheck. Any questions?”
Seeing there were none he proceeded with his harangue. “OK. Let’s see a show of hands. How many of you have used a hoedad, before?” Only three hands went up. “Three. That’s what I thought. For the rest of you, I know it’s kind of strange looking. But as you are about to learn, a hoedad is an extremely well-designed tool, very functional.”
It was the industry standard planting tool, and resembled a garden hoe, with a much longer blade and a tapered handle. The thing was odd-looking indeed, until a man learned how to handle one, which took all of a few hours.
Suddenly Conyers was brandishing a hoedad before the group, swinging it around in a full range of motion. He did it with practiced ease. “These are nicely balanced tools,” he said as he passed the hoedad back and forth from hand to hand.
There was something sensual about the way he ran his hand up and down the long wooden shaft. “I love the feel of these oak handles,” he said, “and I’m sure you will too. Before the week is out, your hoedad is going to feel like part of your own body. Now pay close attention.” There was no need to say it. By now, all eyes were glued on the boss.
Conyers swung the tool overhead as before and, in a smooth fluid motion that never broke form, brought the blade down hard and fast and buried it in the sandy ground up to the neck. Bending d
own, he worked the hole open and made it look easy. Next, he reached into one of his harness bags and pulled out a small seedling. He held it up high for everyone to see. The roots dangled below the small stem, dripping wet. Conyers stroked the mass of wet roots with affection, as if he were fondling his own beard.
“OK, we’ll run through it. This is a Loblolly pine seedling, and this here is the root. First lesson. Tree roots grow down, not up. Understand?” Nineteen heads nodded. Conyers pointed to the lowest tip. “This little fella, it’s called the leader. This is the most important part because it’s the growing point. This little guy needs to point down. I mean straaaaight down. You all hear me?” he almost shouted. “What did I just say?”
Someone volunteered, “You said, point her down.”
“Right,” Conyers said. “Straight down. I want him headed for China. Otherwise, the seedling just won’t make it. Now, watch.” Conyers twisted the leader up into a “J.” “See this? This is a no-no. This is called a ‘J’ root and this we can’t have. This, I promise, will get you fired. Because, like I done told you, and, folks, I’ll be repeating it until you are sick to death of hearing it, tree roots grow down. THEY DON’T GROW UP. Get it?” Nineteen heads nodded in unison.
“Now, watch this.” Leaning over, he placed the seedling in the hole, just so, with the tip down. Then, he closed the hole with two quick swipes of the blade. A final stomp with his boot packed the soil firmly around the tree. Voila! He was done. As Conyers rose he gave the seedling a playful stroke.
“I want you to tamp every tree with your boot. Understand? Tight as a virgin. That way there’s no air pockets.”
Now he tempered his voice. “I need consistency. The key is to make your hole deep enough, and to place the seedling correctly. Do it the right way each and every time and there won’t be any problems. It’s not hard, believe me. It’s easy. If you are sincere and I catch you “J” rooting trees, I will work with you on your technique until you get it right. I’m a patient man. Heck, I’m easy as pie to get along with. You do right by me and I’ll return the favor and do right by you. But I have to warn you. If any of you have any ideas about pulling a fast one, you better think again. Do not go there. Because I know all of the tricks. Oh, you might fool me once or twice, but in the end I will bust you.” He paused to let the stern words sink in, then continued in a milder voice. “We had a fellow last year, a wise guy from Texas, I don’t know, maybe that was his problem, who dumped three bags of seedlings out in the woods and took credit for planting them. He snookered me for a week, but when I nailed his ass he was out’a here. The wise guy ended up paying for three thousand seedlings, which I docked from his last paycheck. So my advice to all of you is, get in the habit, from the start, of doing it right. Quality is everything in this business, and I mean everything. We can’t have sloppy work. I won’t tolerate it. My number one responsibility is quality control and, starting tomorrow, the company rule will go into effect. Three strikes and you’re out. Three strikes won’t apply today. No, today is for learning. Today, you’ll practice the moves and get them down. Heck, by tonight I’m sure most of you will be expert treeplanters. Do I make myself clear?” The heads nodded assent.
NSummer Page 5