Clear Cut

by Alexa Snow

  Nate turned to Keith, who had been watching their exchange without much curiosity, as if he was just waiting for it to be over. "We can call the cops and get them out of here based on the suspicion of them having damaged equipment," Nate pointed out.

  Keith nodded and turned to head toward the bus.

  Carter put a hand out and stopped him. "No," he said, and looked at Nate pleadingly. "Don't."

  Nate wondered why the police thing had taken Carter from calm to anxious in three seconds. "Why not? They spend a night in jail, get asked some questions, we get to find out if they're the ones that fucked with the skidder and the yarder. And the chainsaw."

  "Don't," Carter repeated.

  "Why the hell not? You want to convince me, at least give me a reason."

  Carter let go of Keith's arm. "I'll... look, it's complicated. I'll tell you, but for now can you just trust me and let them stay? I mean, what are the chances they're going to do anything while you're all here working?"

  Nate sighed in frustration. He hated to let the stupid protesters stay -- if they did, it was just going to be an afternoon of annoyance and dirty looks and deliberately loud conversations about how they were damaging the environment and destroying the habitats of wild animals. "Okay," he said reluctantly. "For now. Now being this afternoon. By the time I go to bed tonight you either give me a really good reason to let them stay, or I call and have them removed." He didn't even know why he was going along with this.

  Carter sighed in what Nate thought was probably relief. "Thanks," he said. "Thank you."

  Nate gave up on the idea of trying to have lunch and went up to the landing to see what Keith had been up to while he'd been bucking. Carter followed him.

  "How the hell did you get up here, anyway?" Nate asked. "You know your car's gonna be shot to hell, driving up this road."

  "I walked."

  He felt his eyebrows raise. "Must have taken a while."

  "Yeah, it did."

  "Sit," Nate said, and pointed to a likely spot where Carter would be out of the way.

  Carter gave him a long look, but went over and sat.

  "You're obviously not ready to tell me. That's fine. But I need to know that, in the meantime, you're not gonna be a risk."

  "What are you -- ?" Carter paused. "Oh. You think that because I sided with them, or defended them, or whatever, I might..."

  Nate had expected some kind of denial, an affirmation that Carter wouldn't do something like that. He hadn't expected what Carter said next.

  "You're right to be worried. You can never tell who to trust." Carter stood up and looked at him steadily. "I'm going back to the bunkhouse. Maybe we can talk some more later. After dinner."

  Nate watched Carter walk away and start back down the road. He couldn't help but think that maybe he was the one who hadn't known what he was getting himself into.

  * * * * *

  Carter could feel Nate's eyes on him as he headed back down the road.

  It had been a long walk up, and he figured it was going to seem even longer on the way back, but the idea of staying there and watching Nate eye those protesters -- which was probably what they were, even though he had no way to know for sure -- wasn't something he wanted to deal with. At least the walk back would be mostly downhill. At least his boots were comfortable. He wished he could forget all of the things that were running through his head and focus on the walking. In fact, if his boots had been uncomfortable that might have been better. He would have had the discomfort to think about.

  Carter tried counting steps, but that quickly deteriorated into a miserable repetitive chant in his brain that he couldn't get rid of even when he tried to stop. Okay, now he had the discomfort of that to distract him, at least.

  He understood the young people wanting to come to a site where logging was taking place and make their stand. In some ways, he could understand it even better now than he had back when he was actually doing that kind of thing. At the time, he'd just been young, wanting to do something that would make a difference and thinking that he was too young to make one any other way. It had never occurred to him that, other than voting, he could possibly have any political power at the age of twenty. He'd seen petitions and picketing as useless, as pretending you were trying to do something when in fact you were wasting time while pretending to do something. He'd wanted to do something real, something tangible that had immediate results.

  Now he knew how petitions and picketing weren't particularly effective means of enacting change. Now he understood the desperation of putting your body between a tree and a piece of heavy machinery -- understood how you could get to that point. He wasn't there; he'd let it go a long time ago. He'd had to, if he'd wanted to keep going. But he'd seen other people, some of them his friends, some of them older colleagues that he'd respected, get to that point. Where there was nothing more immediate than doing something drastic.

  Carter didn't think he'd ever be at that place of complete passion again, that place where everything mattered so much. He still had the drive, the desire for things to be better, but it wasn't all-consuming anymore. Sometimes he missed it, but most of the time he was grateful. It had been too much.

  He thought that when he got back to the bunkhouse he'd call the hospital again and see if Jeff would be up for a visitor that evening. He could drive down and have dinner somewhere alone, at the hospital even, if that was easier. Which it very well might be, considering how little he knew the area. Visit for a little while, bring Jeff some books or magazines or something to distract him. Get away from Nate and the swirl of confusion that being in his presence seemed to create.

  It didn't take long to call the hospital and get an update on Jeff's condition; the receptionist reported that Jeff was doing well, but that he was still heavily medicated and not up for visitors. That killed Carter's plans pretty neatly.

  James had come back from the side and started to cook dinner, the smell of the meat frying driving Carter from the main part of the bunkhouse into his and Jeff's room. He shut the door and opened up his laptop, taking some notes, half his attention on what he was typing and half on other stuff entirely. The thin mattress underneath him was probably less comfortable than sitting outside would have been, even in the rain. He wondered if he'd need some serious chiropractic work by the time he got home; no one should have to sleep on beds this awful, and the men on the crew probably only could because they were so tired from the heavy physical labor of their jobs.

  Carter thought that he'd probably have to talk to Nate at some point about his reasons for not wanting the police called on those kids camping out at the side. It wasn't just because he didn't want to see them hauled off and questioned, and possibly spending the night in jail, even though that was definitely part of it. And it wasn't just because they reminded him of himself and Shannon at that age, although that was part of it, too. He thought -- or maybe he just wanted to think -- that it was mostly because he wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. It wasn't like there was any proof that the kids had done, or were planning to do, anything to the equipment. It seemed, from Carter's point of view, like the equipment broke down all the time on its own. Wasn't that why there was a whole storage shed full of spare parts?

  The kids probably just thought that hanging around and talking to the logging crew was going to make a difference.

  He couldn't concentrate on the book, so he shut the computer down. He tried telling himself that it was because he was waiting to find out for sure that Jeff was going to be okay, but who the fuck was he trying to kid?

  He couldn't stop thinking about Nate.

  9.

  The thin drizzle had been falling for a couple of hours, and they were all soaked through. A couple of guys wore rain slickers, but the reality was they didn't help a hell of a lot -- there were openings for hands and neck, and the rain often fell sideways. It worked its way into all the little crevasses until every inch of you was wet. The only saving grace was that it wasn't a cold rain.


  The crew burst into the bunkhouse and scattered, some of the guys heading for the showers and others just focused on getting into dry clothes. Nate strode wearily down to his room at the end of the hallway and kicked off his boots. He was just getting ready to call the hospital when Carter appeared in the doorway.

  "Jeff's doing fine, but he's still out of it. They say no point in visiting until tomorrow -- he'll be less drugged up by then."

  "Thanks," Nate said. "Saved me a call."

  He felt Carter's eyes on him, taking in his wet hair. The way his shirt clung to his arms and torso.

  "I take it it's still raining."

  Nate snorted. "Yeah. We're in the Pacific rain forest -- kind of comes with the territory."

  "I guess so." Carter fidgeted in the doorway.

  "M'gonna get changed, so get lost," Nate said, and then hesitated. Fuck, what was happening that this guy had him hesitating before saying what was on his mind? "Talk. After dinner."

  "Okay," said Carter. He disappeared again.

  He didn't come out for dinner and Nate tried not to wonder why. At around the time they were finishing eating, Carter suddenly walked through the dining area and into the kitchen, carrying an empty plate. Ah -- he'd eaten in his room. Must be the meat thing again. Either that or he was disgusted with himself for letting Nate touch him. Nate felt his arm muscles tighten at that thought. It wasn't that he would ever agree with an assessment of himself as repulsive, but it wouldn't have been the first time a guy who thought he liked other guys had changed his mind after the grim reality of a hard fuck.

  They could all hear the sounds of Carter washing up at the sink, and the running water continued for longer than it should have taken to wash a plate and a fork. By the time Nate went in to do his own dishes, Carter had washed every other dirty dish in the kitchen, other than the pan that had been used to cook the chicken.

  "Didn't have to do that," Nate said gruffly.

  "That's what I told him," said Flash.

  "It gave me something to do." Carter's voice was quiet but not subdued.

  The rest of them bustled around and got the rest of the dishes cleaned up, and Jared and Don started putting together the stuff for the next day's lunches. Nate watched, while trying to pretend that he wasn't, as Carter headed back for his room.

  Nate waited until the kitchen was clear and everyone was settled in doing whatever they were going to do for the next couple of hours, which was mostly reading or playing cards, and then took two beers from the bottom shelf of the fridge and went and knocked on Carter's door.

  "Come in," said Carter.

  Nate swung the door open and leaned against the door frame. "Talk," he said.

  Carter sighed. "Yeah, okay. Here?"

  "That a request, or a question? 'Cause I don't care."

  "Is it still raining out?"

  "Probably."

  "We could sit in my car?"

  Nate shook his head. "No, we couldn't. I don't think I'd even fit in there."

  "Yours?"

  "I guess." Nate backed out into the hallway and handed Carter one of the beers as he came forward.

  Once they were sitting in the SUV and out of the rain, Nate slid the driver's seat back the last notch to give himself a little more leg room, since he wasn't going to be driving anyway. He took a long drink of his beer and then tilted his head back to lean on the headrest. "So. Talk."

  Carter was fidgeting with the label on his bottle. God, Nate hated it when people fidgeted. The top edge of the label tore a little bit, and Carter peeled it off in a long strip. Nate wanted to slap the thing out of Carter's hands.

  "I just... I don't want to see them get arrested. They're just kids."

  "Kids that might have damaged our equipment," Nate pointed out. "Kids that might have been the reason that Jeff got hurt."

  Carter challenged that immediately. "Jeff said it seemed like... well, like a normal kind of accident to him."

  "He was so doped up he probably didn't even know where he was," Nate replied, although he didn't really think that was true.

  Carter didn't seem to have an answer for that. He peeled another strip off the label on his beer bottle and then stuck the bottle between his knees and proceeded to rip the piece of paper into small bits, piling them carefully on the dashboard.

  "You're gonna clean that up," Nate said.

  "Yeah."

  "So what the hell is it? Why do you think it would be that bad for those kids to get dragged down out of the woods and into some warm police station somewhere, where they get asked some questions and maybe spend a night or two behind bars?"

  Unexpectedly, Carter raised his voice. "Because I've fucking been there, okay? I don't want to see anyone else go through something like that!"

  "Been where? Harassed by the cops?"

  "That, too," Carter muttered, sounding controlled again, although Nate thought that he could hear the undercurrent of anger and stress and tension still there.

  Carter picked up the beer bottle again and started to peel another strip off, and fuck if that wasn't going to drive Nate crazy if he had to keep watching it. Nate snatched the bottle away from Carter, ripped the entire label off in one pull, and handed the bottle back.

  "There ya go," he said, as if he'd been immensely helpful.

  "Yeah." Carter sounded bleak. "Thanks."

  Cursing himself for caring, which was obviously what was going on here as much as he didn't want to admit it, Nate said, "Sounds like you need to tell someone."

  Carter shook his head. Then he said, "Well, maybe. I never have."

  "Spent a few nights in jail, did ya? What'd you do?"

  "Only one," said Carter. "I -- well. A bunch of us broke into a lab. It was -- they had animals in there, they were experimenting on animals with electrodes, something about nerve responses to pain. They had rabbits, cats, dogs... a whole zoo. They even had a capuchin -- that's a kind of monkey."

  "I know what a capuchin is." He hadn't, but he did now. So that counted, right?

  "Sorry. Anyway... we weren't going to damage property. At least we weren't supposed to. We were just going to break in and take the animals out. We had a van, a big pile of animal crates ... we were just supposed to get the animals out." Carter sounded like he was still absorbing the fact that things had gone differently from the way they were supposed to.

  "Didn't quite go down that way, did it?"

  "No. A couple of the guys just went nuts -- they started smashing all of the lab equipment, and broken glass was flying everywhere. They poured a bunch of chemicals -- I don't even know what they were -- all over the desks, and into the filing cabinets and over all the paperwork they could find. The rest of us were trying to get the animals out, but the fumes were terrible... I think they must have mixed stuff together that shouldn't be, the same way bleach and ammonia -- "

  "Yeah, I know all about bleach and ammonia," Nate said. "Keep going." He thought that if Carter lost his momentum now it might very well be the end of the conversation.

  Carter sighed shakily. "We got most of the animals out, but then Car- um, one of the women said that there were still a couple of cats in the back. The guys were in the van already, freaking out about getting caught; they didn't want to go back in. I thought that the fumes might kill the cats... I couldn't just leave them there. I mean, if we hadn't gone in there, they would have been... probably okay -- maybe not great, but maybe not dead. I don't know."

  "You went back in after them," Nate said.

  "Yeah," Carter said.

  "And when you came back out your 'friends' were gone." It wasn't a big leap to make.

  "I never even made it back out," Carter said. "I had the cats in a carrier and I was almost to the front door when the police came in. Silent alarms and all, you know? But, yeah, they'd gone off and left me there to take the fall for them."

  "You were only in jail the one night? Must have had a pretty good lawyer."

  "Not even. I was..." There was a long paus
e here, and when Carter finally spoke again Nate thought that he was trying to convince himself that what he was saying was true. "Lucky. I wouldn't say who I'd been with -- but they knew I hadn't been alone. Heck, they said they knew I wasn't the instigator, they knew I was just following along with some other people, and if I'd tell them who, they'd get me out. But I wouldn't talk."

  Nate was vaguely impressed. Not that he could understand thinking it was a good idea to break into someplace where animals had a roof over their heads and food and water in order to take them... where, exactly? But still, loyalty was a good trait to have, from a hypothetical standpoint, at least.

  "Where'd the luck part come in?" he asked.

  Carter took a swig from his bottle of beer -- it might have been the first drink he'd taken -- and shrugged. "They took fingerprints at the lab, and it turned out one of the guys had a record a mile long. They arrested him and brought him in and eventually he spilled everything. Named everybody, even said that I'd only been there for the animals. They decided... I guess they thought they had more important people to worry about than me." His eyes flicked to Nate's for a brief moment, and then he returned to staring out the windshield at the steadily falling drizzle. He took another long drink.