Bonner Incident
Page 4
“Northern white pine,” the captain offered.
“Yes, northern white pine. It wasn’t marked yet you cut it down along with-,” he looked at the captain again.
“Douglas fir.”
“Yes, along with a Douglas fir,” Ronald said turning back to Joshua.
Seeing the stump and the two next to it, Joshua shook his head. “Ronald, those two trees had trees tangled in the limbs. You know what those are called by loggers? Widowmakers. If you cut the smaller tree down that’s tied up in the branches, it doesn’t fall. When you cut down the big one with a smaller one leaning on it, you can’t control where either of them falls. That’s how my dad was killed. It’s clearly laid out in the contract; widow makers are safety violations and must be cut down.”
Ronald scoffed. “You can cut a tree with a chainsaw and make the end jump several yards out.”
Joshua stepped back in complete shock that someone would say something so stupid. “I’ll get my chainsaw for you and you can show me just how in the hell you can make a tree jump several yards off the stump.”
“This is your sale site. I’m not going to show you anything,” Ronald snapped.
“What I thought, you’ve never touched a chainsaw,” Joshua said. “If you want, I can get my contract, I was just looking at it. For safety reasons, unmarked trees can be cut down without penalty, and I know my cutters took pictures before cutting those trees down just because they were unmarked and old growth.”
“We’ll come back to that,” Ronald said opening his notebook. “We found several stumps above the required thirty-centimeter height.”
“Like hell,” Joshua snapped. “Not taking as much of the base as we can costs us money.”
Ronald pointed behind him. “There is one right there,” he grinned. “That one, if I remember correctly, was ninety centimeters.”
Spinning around, it didn’t take long to spot the stump. “That tree grew out of a vertical rock wall, that’s the only place we could’ve cut it, hell your marking even marked it at the cut line,” Joshua shouted, turning back around.
“Don’t yell at me,” Ronald snapped.
“Listen, boy,” Joshua said lowering his voice to a growl. “I’m not one of your employees or your kid and you don’t even come close to impressing me so don’t snap at me, Ronald.”
One of the captains stepped up. “You will address him with respect. We are with the enforcement division and will arrest you.”
“I got a lawyer. Go right ahead,” Joshua said calmly. “So, do you want me to shut down while you investigate?”
“No, I’m advising it,” Ronald said opening his notebook back up.
Fighting the urge to beat Ronald to death with his notebook, Joshua took a deep breath. “Then like I said, we’ll be here until the job is done.”
“We found three ‘green’ zone infractions,” Ronald said looking up.
Giving a long sigh, “I don’t care,” Joshua moaned. “Shut me down or leave us alone. I will be filing a complaint because you are endangering my employees.”
“That’s fine, I’ll file it away,” Ronald grinned closing his notebook. “You had an underage employee on the site, so I will be forced to notify the Department of Labor and the EPA about your ‘green’ zone violations.”
Spinning around and walking away. “Fine, just tell them to wear a hardhat and logging boots before they come,” Joshua said fighting to stay calm.
When he stopped at the crew, they were all looking from him back to the three walking to the SUVs. “Boss,” Ben said, watching the three climb in their vehicles. “Charlie still lives down the road from me, I’m stopping by and kicking his ass.”
Shaking his head, Joshua reached out and grabbed William by the shoulder. “Forget it, guys, we’ve been fucked with before,” he said and grinned at his son. “We need to take our foreman for the day to supper. I’m buying.”
Everyone cheered and grabbed their gear, heading to the trucks. “Dad, is it going to be okay?” William asked after he climbed in the truck.
“Hope so son, but they can only bleed a man so much before he has nothing left. Then he’s like a mean bear; don’t poke him or you’re liable to get hurt bad.”
Chapter Two
Beep, beep, beep, sounded and Joshua reached over tapping the alarm clock. Sitting up in bed, he rubbed his eyes and brushed down his beard. He looked over at his wife, Sonya, sound asleep. Sonya was his second wife. His first wife, Mary, William’s mother, died of an aneurysm when William was five.
Leaning over, he kissed Sonya on the cheek as she reached up patting his head, “Your beard tickles,” she mumbled and immediately fell back asleep.
Getting out of bed, Joshua looked at the clock as he dressed. “I wonder what it’s like, going for a long time without having to wake up in the early morning hours?” he asked himself. Putting his boots on, he grabbed his Springfield 1911 off the bedside table and slid the clip-on holster over his belt. He had a concealed permit and carried the pistol most of the time. About the only time he didn’t, was when he was working. A pistol on your hip grabbed all kinds of shit, and working on very steep slopes, that could be deadly.
But even on some jobs, he’d carried it on him. Like when the Eco-furry-animal-lover terrorists were protesting, taking pop shots at them or sabotaging their equipment or work-site. Or when he worked in Alaska or Canada, bears could be a problem, be damned what the environmentalists say. In Alaska one year, he cut down a tree and turned around to spot a grizzly twenty yards away creeping closer. He’d pulled his pistol and shot the ground in front of it. He really didn’t want to shoot something with teeth that weighed just shy of a ton with a tiny .45 caliber bullet.
A .45 was massive to stop a man but could be compared to a spitball for stopping a grizzly. One of the machine operators that night, who was working with a company on that site had asked why Joshua was scared, he had a massive 3120 Husqvarna 118 cc chainsaw with a 42-inch blade.
Joshua had turned to the guy, “Son, a man several years ago, thought the same thing as a grizzly charged him. He raised his chainsaw gunning the engine and swung as the bear closed. His buddies came up an hour later, finding the bear eating the man. They shot it with a rifle and found a chainsaw clogged up with hair that choked it out. The blade never even made it to the bear’s skin.”
Grabbing his spare magazines, Joshua clipped them on his left side. Walking out of the bedroom, he glanced back at Sonya to see her snuggled up in the blankets. He smiled at her, thankful she’d come into his life. Even though she was William’s stepmom, she doted on William, and William loved her to death. Walking down the hall, he passed William’s room and eased in to see William sprawled over the bed with the covers kicked off. He patted William’s chest and picked the covers off the floor, covering him back up.
Walking in the kitchen, he smelled the coffee from the automatic coffee maker. “Sometimes technology is alright,” he said grabbing his mug. As he fixed his coffee, Joshua looked at the pictures hanging out in the hall. One was of him, Sonya and William up at the cabin.
The cabin was built by his great uncle and was about six miles from Nordman, Idaho. It sat on twenty acres, not even two miles from the Washington State border, and Joshua tried to get there every chance he could, which was several times a month at least.
William would always go with him if he didn’t have school and Sonya went too, but didn’t really like the rustic setting. The cabin had power from solar panels and running water, but that was pretty much it. Well, not really after last year. Somehow, William had rigged a cellphone up to a booster, and now the cabin had internet.
Joshua used to hate computers, but his boy had changed that for the most part. Walking across the kitchen, Joshua smiled as he opened up his laptop to look at the alternate news sites. Scanning the headlines as he sipped his coffee, Joshua shook his head. “Wish I had enough money to buy a politician,” he chuckled, reading how foreign parties paid millions to politicians.
Grabbing his coat and tucking it under his arm, Joshua grabbed his keys and lunch box walking out. Every night, Sonya made his lunch and fixed the coffee pot for him, and Joshua believed she needed a spot in heaven for that alone. Seeing a person standing next to his truck, Joshua grabbed the butt of his pistol. “Whoa Boss, it’s me,” Ben said holding up his hands.
Feeling his heart vibrating in his chest, Joshua fought to keep his legs from giving out. “I should shoot your ass just for scaring the shit out of me like that,” Joshua said walking over to the truck. The house sat on ten acres just outside of the small community of Lamb Creek off of Priest Lake. There was a small pasture and on the other side of the pasture was a large metal shop that Joshua ran the logging company out of.
“Sorry Boss,” Ben said lowering his hands.
“What the hell are you doing here? Your schedule only changes when I’m sick and that’s been what, six times in seventeen years?”
“I’m riding in with you. We need to talk,” Ben said stepping around to the passenger side. “I told Gene to drive my truck in.”
Hitting his key fob to make the truck start and doors unlock, Joshua nodded. The other company trucks that his crew used were at the shop. The crew drove to the shop, then took the company trucks to the site. “What the hell is so important that you got up before me?” Joshua asked tossing his coat in the backseat as he climbed in.
Ben climbed in and grabbed his seat belt. “Charlie was called to the main office in Missoula. He has to go there today.”
Shaking his head, Joshua turned to Ben. “Did you go over there and whoop his ass after I told you not to?”
“No,” Ben scoffed and saw Joshua just staring at him not believing it. “Well, I was going to, but Charlie basically laid down on the ground crying when I got out of my truck. I just didn’t have the heart to stomp his ass with him acting like that.”
Turning in his seat and grabbing the steering wheel, Joshua backed out of the driveway. “Ben, you’re not fighting MMA anymore, so you need to chill with the fighting. Bail is starting to get expensive,” Joshua said pulling out on the street.
“You’ve only bailed me out like four times,” Ben said waving his hand. “And I’ve always paid you back.”
As he drove, Joshua counted in his mind each time he’d had bailed Ben out of jail for beating the shit out of someone and more than once, it was several ‘someones’ at the same time. One thing that could be said, Ben could fight and wasn’t scared to do it. Pulling into a gas station that served breakfast, Joshua parked. “Since high school, I counted twenty-two times I’ve bailed you out of jail for fighting, and one for taking a man’s gun away from him and shoving the barrel in his ass.”
“The motherfucker was divorced from the bitch,” Ben snapped as Joshua climbed out. “You don’t come to my house and pull a gun out because I’m banging your ex. The fucker is lucky I didn’t shoot his ass.”
Joshua pointed to Ben’s hip at the bulge under his coat. “You aren’t supposed to have a gun, Ben.” Like Joshua, Ben carried a gun, believing the old adage, ‘it’s better to be judged by twelve than carried by six’.
“You know all but two of those charges were dropped and I’ve never had a felony conviction. It was knocked down to a misdemeanor.”
Not in the mood for Ben’s logic, Joshua headed inside to grab premade sausage, egg and cheese biscuits. Climbing back in the truck, Joshua tossed the bag to Ben. “So, you wanted to tell me that Charlie got called to the regional Forestry office today?” Joshua said pulling out on the highway.
“Yeah, but Charlie thinks he’s going to be fired today,” Ben said passing a biscuit to Joshua. “Charlie said this Ronald guy wants to be moved higher in other branches of government and wants to make a name for himself.”
“Asshole is a good name for him,” Joshua said unwrapping his biscuit as he pulled off the highway onto a dirt road heading up to the mountains.
“Uh, Josh?” Ben said in a nervous voice glancing over at him. “Charlie said we need to really consider sabotaging our equipment on-site to get out of the contract.”
Having known Ben all his life and considered Ben his best friend, Joshua slowed down hearing Ben’s voice quiver. “Come again,” Josh said turning to look at him.
“Charlie said we may want to sabotage our equipment to get out of the contract.”
“Ben!” Joshua shouted slamming on the brakes. “You know most of that equipment is new, you were with me when I bought it. You’re talking about breaking almost two million dollars in heavy equipment and need I remind you, insurance doesn’t cover logging equipment in a national forest, thanks to the last administration that was in the White House. You have to wait for the cops to find who did it and sue them. If we did it, I’d have to eat it.”
With a flat expression, Ben turned away and looked out the front window at the dirt road in the headlights. “I talked to the guys. We can take a few months without pay to fix the equipment.”
Shaking his head, Joshua opened the center console and pulled out the contract, holding it out for Ben. “That’s nice, but that wouldn’t cover anything,” he said dropping the contract in Ben’s lap. “Go ahead and read it. Eighty percent of your operating heavy equipment has to be damaged to fifty percent of value. So that means, of the two log trucks, skidder, crawler, Hahn processor and loader; five would have to be damaged fifty percent of value. You’re talking well over a million dollars, Ben. Last I checked, and I’m the one who writes the checks, you and the crew don’t make near that much in a few months.”
“Josh,” Ben said turning to look at him. “Charlie said that Ronald went after a large logging company in Washington. They ended up having to do their sale site for free, then pay several million in bullshit fines. Ronald never went after the small outfits like ours because we don’t have a lot of money to pay fines, but with the attention he got in D.C. from that large company, he wants to take what any company has. Bringing in that kind of money for the government makes a big name for him.”
Reaching over and putting the truck in park, Joshua threw up his hands. “Whoa, let me get this straight. Ronald Gifford is bankrupting businesses by fining them, getting money for the government, and putting people out of work, so the government has to support them. Is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s what Charlie said, and I believe him,” Ben said with a straight face. “America is the only country that punishes businesses so hard they bankrupt them, the same businesses that provide jobs supporting the economy. Unless you are a massive business that can buy protection from a politician like you’re paying the mafia.”
Turning around and grabbing the shifter, Joshua put the truck in drive. “Ben, all that new equipment almost bankrupted me. If it’s hurt, the company is dead, and I’m going under.”
Ben just stared out the window as Joshua drove down the dirt road up into the mountains. “I know, but maybe we can break the stuff so it doesn’t really cost that much,” he offered, but he knew it was hopeless.
“Let’s just bust our asses and get this job done,” Joshua said.
“I’m all for that,” Ben said. “To be honest, I don’t want to log in Washington this summer. How about we just go to Alaska and Canada?”
Seeing the snow line start up ahead, Joshua pushed the 4x4 button. “If we get picked up for Canada, we can do that.”
They drove in silence until they reached the mountaintop valley that the job site sat in. Ben finally unwrapped a biscuit and looked over at Joshua with a grin. “William did a great job yesterday, didn’t he?”
“He sure did,” Joshua said grabbing his mug. Ben didn’t have kids and had never been married. He had fallen in love with
many women and like his fights, sometimes more than one woman at the same time. Ben just didn’t stay in love for very long. Some of the others on the crew had kids, but no boys as old as William came to the logging sites.
“You load and I’ll get the vehicles warmed up,” Ben said climbing out and grabbing his gear.
After grabbing his own gear, Joshua walked over to the loader, shining the flashlight around on the wet snow. “If they leave me alone, we can be done next week,” he said and climbed up on the loader.
Before Ben had the skidder and crawler cranked up, Joshua was finished with the first truck. Leaving the loader running, he climbed out to see Ben climbing in the log truck, hauling the trailer he’d just loaded. Heading over to the other log truck, Joshua looked around as the lights from all of the vehicles lit up the area, and was certain they would be done by next week.
Unless a strong warm front moved in, they shouldn’t have any problems. The site was at fifty-eight hundred feet and the snow was still over a foot deep where the equipment hadn’t been, and the ground had refrozen overnight.
When Ben pulled the loaded truck out of the way, Joshua pulled into the loading area and jumped out. Landing hard, he grunted and bellowed out a puff of fog in the cold air. “I remember when I could jump off the roof of a skidder and that didn’t hurt my knees,” he grumbled heading back to the loader.
Loading the second trailer, Joshua glanced over to see Ben strapping down the first trailer. “It’s not so bad having help in the morning,” he said with a nod. When the trailer was loaded, Ben came over and they strapped the loaded logs down.
“Remember when we could only put two or three logs on a truck because they were so big?” Ben laughed locking down a chain.
“Shit, I remember when I was a kid, putting one log on a trailer for a load. Heads up,” Joshua said tossing a chain over the trailer.
With the trailers loaded, Joshua looked at his watch and saw they had over an hour until the crew showed up. “Let’s eat the rest of the biscuits and drink some coffee before the crew shows up,” he said as Ben walked around the trailer.