Chapter 39

“Course, I don’t expect you to last out the morning, but we got a stretcher handy.” I grin over at him. “That boy of Orland’s is handlin’ the other line...he can take over when you fall behind.” He looks like he’s being ordered up to the front lines, standing all at attention and his jaw set. I’m intending to kind of kid him but, try as I may, I can hear myself sounding just exactly like old Henry doing some first-rate ass-chewing, and I know I couldn’t pick a worse way to talk to Lee. But I’m damned if I can stop it.) “You ain’t gonna like it at first. As a matter of fact you’re gonna think I’m givin’ you the dirtiest end of the dirtiest stick on the whole operation.” (And he wouldn’t of been far from the truth.) “But it can’t be helped. The easier jobs, the machinery jobs, it’d take too long to teach you and they’re risky even when a guy knows what he’s about. Besides, we’re hurting for time. . . .” (And maybe that right there is why I couldn’t help sounding angry, because of knowing just how tough setting choker was going to be on a tenderfoot. Maybe I really was trying to be extra tough and was hacked at myself for loading him with it. I do that sometimes . . .) “But one thing: it’ll make a man of you.” (I just don’t know. All I know is I thought I was relaxing a little around him, then tied up, the same as I tied up trying to talk with Viv the night before, explaining our deal with Wakonda Pacific. Same as I tie up with anybody except Joe Ben; and me and him didn’t really have to talk a whole lot . . .) “If you can make it through the first few days you’ll have it whipped; if you can’t, well, you just can’t is all. There’s lots of other niggers can’t cut it neither and they ain’t all in Dixie.” (I’ve always had a tough time trying to talk to others without barking. With, say, Viv, I’d start out trying to sound like Charles Boyer or somebody and come off, every time, sounding like the old man telling Sheriff Layton how to deal with the boogin’ Reds in this country, how to take care of them Commy bustards right! And believe me, sounding like that is sounding pretty damn hard. When old Henry got going on the Reds he could really come on fierce . . .)  “But all I ask is you give it a fair go for a while.” (Because Henry always claimed he was convinced that the only thing worse than Reds was Jews, and the only thing worse than Jews was high-and-mighty niggers, and the only thing worse than the whole lot of them was them goddamned hardheaded southern bigots he was always reading about. “Oughta poison everybody south of the Mason-Dixon line...’stead sending Northern tax money down to feed ’em . . .”) “So if you’re ready, grab hold of that piece of cable and drag it here. I’ll show you how to look for a choker hole. C’mon, snap out of it. Bend down here an’ watch . . .” (I wouldn’t argue much with the old man myself, mainly because I didn’t know Reds here in America, and didn’t feel much one way or the other about uppity jigs, and was just a little vague about what a bigot was...but I tell you, for a while him and Viv used to really lock horns about just that very subject, that race business. Really get into it. I remember... well, let me recall the thing that stopped the whole business. Let’s see . . .) “Okay, now, you watch this.” Lee stands with his hands in his pockets while Hank explains the job with the slow patience of a man who is explaining something once and it had better be picked up because it isn’t about to be repeated. He shows Lee how to loop the length of cable over a fallen and bucked log and how to hook the cable to the big line that runs in a circle from the pulley at the anchor stump to the rigging at the top of the spar. “. . . and when you get it hooked you’ll have to be your own whistle-punk till things level out. We’re too short-handed for such luxuries. You savvy?” I nodded and Hank went on outlining my duties for the day. “Okay, listen.” Hank gives the cable a kick to make sure it is secure, then leads Lee up the slope to a high stump where a small wire runs in a gleaming arch to the donkey puffing and clanging seventy-five yards away. “One jerk means take ’er away.” He pulls the wire. A shrill peep from a compressed-air whistle on the donkey sets the tiny figure of Joe Ben into action. The cable tightens with a deep twanging. The donkey engine strains; an outraged roar; the log lurches out of its groove and goes bumping up the hill toward the yarder. When the log reaches the spar they watch Joe Ben leap from the donkey cab and scuttle over the pile of logs to unhook the choker. Then one of Orland’s boys creaks the neck of the yarder forward, like the skeleton of some prehistoric reptile painted yellow and brought fleshless to life; Joe Ben gouges the tongs into each side of the log and jumps clear as he waves to the boy in the yarder cab. Again the gigantic piece of wood lurches and is jerked into the air as Joe Ben hustles back to the donkey controls. “Joe’s bein’ his own chaser. It’s tough on him, but like I said, it can’t be helped.” By the time the yarder has pivoted and swung the log onto the bed of the truck and nudged it into place, Joe Ben is back in the donkey and the cable is reeling back out again. It comes snaking through the brush and torn earth toward the place where Lee and Hank stand waiting. I listened, hoping Hank would explain more about the task, cursing him for presuming he needed to explain as much as he had. We were standing alongside each other at the “show,” going through last minute instructions before my big First Day . . . (Viv, see, spends a lot of her time reading and is up on a lot of things—that’s trouble right there, because there’s nothing in the whole world makes old Henry madder than somebody, especially some woman, having the common gall to be up on a lot of things he’s already got opinions on . . . so, anyhow, this once, they got into it about what the Bible of all things says about this race business . . .) They watch the cable draw nearer. “Then, you see, when the choker gets close to where you want it, give her two jerks.” The whistle peeps twice. The highline stops. The choker cable hangs shuddering in its own dust. “Okay, watch now; I’ll set it one more time for you.” (The old man, see, was claiming the Bible said the spooks were born to be bondservants because their blood was black like the blood of Satan. Viv disagreed a while, then got up, walked to the gun case where we keep the big family Bible with the birthdays in it, and went to flipping through with Henry just aglowering . . .) When Hank has repeated the procedure he turns to Lee . . . “You got it now?” I nodded, determined and dubious. Brother Hank then took a wristwatch from his pocket and looked at it, wound it, and returned to the same pocket. “I’ll check with you when I can,” he told me. “I got to see about rigging a spar on that peak yonder this morning because we’ll have to move the yarding and loading later this afternoon or tomorrow. You sure you got it now?” Lee nods again, his mouth tight. Hank says, “Okeedoke, then,” and goes crashing off through the vine and brush toward the crummy truck. “Hey.” A few yards away he stops and turns . . . “I bet you didn’t think to bring those gloves, did you? No, I mighta known. Here. Use mine.” Lee catches the wadded gloves and mutters, “Thanks, thanks ever so much.” Hank resumes his crashing through the brush... (When Viv found what she’s after in that big Bible she read, “The blood of all men is as one,” and shut the Bible. And I tell you: that pissed the old man so ...that I don’t know if he would of ever spoke to her again, not another word ever, if it hadn’t been for the lunches she started packing for us to take to work....) Lee holds the gloves one in each hand, burning with frustrated and confused anger as his brother walks away: You prick, he calls wordlessly after Hank, you pompous prick! Use mine, huh, as though he was giving me his right arm. Why I’ll wager every nickel I can lay my hands on that he has at the very least a dozen such pairs in that truck! Hank finished his instructions and walked away, leaving me to have at it. I looked after him stomping off through brush and brambles, then looked at the cable he had left with me, then at the nearest log, and, fired by that long-shot challenger’s elation that I had experienced earlier, pulled on my gloves and had at it ... As soon as Hank is gone Lee curses again and jerks on the first of the gloves in a stylized parody of drawing-room fury, but the elegance of his style is marred when he is forced to inspect the second glove, and the fury turns abruptly back on itself when he withdraws from the last two fingers the dirty, sweat-packed cotton padding Hank uses to protect the ends of his tender stumps . . . The job was actually simple enough—on the surface— simple, backbreaking labor. But if there is one thing you learn in college it is that the first snowstorm is the most important— score high in your first test and you can coast out the rest of the term. So I had at it that first day with a will, dreaming that I might snow Brother Hank fast and measure up early and be finished with the whole ridiculous business before it broke my back . . . The first log he chooses lies at the top of a small knoll, in a patch of firecracker weed. He heads toward it; the little red flowers with sulphur-yellow tips seem to part to make way for him and the cable. He throws the bell around the end of the log that is lifted free of the earth where the knoll drops sharply toward the canyon, then secures it in its hook. He steps back to examine the job, a little puzzled: “There doesn’t seem anything so difficult about this. . . .” and walks back to the jerk-wire. The whistle on the donkey peeps. The log tips and heads for the spar tree. “Nothing so very difficult . . .” He turns to see if Hank has been watching and sees his brother just disappearing over another ridge where a second line leads from the spar tree. “Where is he going?” He glances around, deciding quickly on the next log he will hook. “Is he going to that other cable over there?” (Yeah, it was the lunches that Viv packed . . .) Hank passes the boy at the other anchor stump, telling him he’d better get it in gear, “Lee’s already tooted one in” and continues on into the woods . . . (Lunches, see, are about twice as big a deal in the woods as at home, because you get terrible hungry by noon; and the way the old man appreciates eating anyhow, they are like a Major League event. So when Viv took over the lunchbag packing from Jan—on account of Jan being pregnant, was Viv’s story, but I’ve always suspected it was more to get back in the old man’s good graces—well, Henry just somehow forgot all about Bibles and black blood. Not that Jan’s lunches weren’t all right, because they were; but that’s all they were. Viv’s lunches were always all right and then a good deal more than all right to boot. They were a goddamned feast sometimes. But more than there just being plenty, there was generally something special about them . . .) The second log goes as easy as the first. And as it is being unhooked he looks back toward the other anchor stump some hundred yards away on that other ridge. There still has been no whistle signal. As he watches he sees a figure struggling through a thicket of red alder, the cable still over his shoulder. Though the figure is not even wearing the same color sweat shirt, Lee is suddenly certain that it is Hank, “Taking over the other choker job!” The line above his head strums and with rising excitement he looks and sees his second log is unhooked and his cable is scrambling back to him. He takes it up before it has completely stopped and jogs, dragging the heavy cable as fast as he can, toward the next log, not even taking time to glance at the progress of the figure he supposes to be his brother . . . (Something special and different in her lunches—something other than sandwiches, cookies, and an apple; something you could strut and brag about when you were sitting with a bunch of jacks eating out of their ordinary old nosebags—but, mostly, it was that Viv’s lunches gave you a little piece of the day to look forward to in the morning and think back on in the afternoon. . . .) The cable snags briefly, but he wrenches it loose. A berry vine trips him and he falls to his knees, grinning as he recalls Joe Ben’s advice, but he is still able to secure the log and jerk the take-it-away signal just seconds before the second signal comes from the other ridge. In the distance Joe Ben’s head swings back in surprise: he has been sitting, his hands already on the levers controlling the cables running to that southern ridge, not expecting a call so soon from Lee. “That boy is really humping it.” Joe changes levers. Lee holds his panting, then sees the highline above him tauten and his log jump out of the vines: he is a log ahead, two if you count that first one! How about that, Hank? (Her lunches sure changed the old man’s point of view . . .) Two logs ahead! The next log has fallen on a clear, almost perfectly level piece of ground. Unhampered by vines or brush, Lee reaches the log easily, noticing with elation that he is gaining on the other figure, who is fighting through the red alder again. But the very flatness of the ground beneath Lee’s log presents a problem; how do you get the cable under it? Lee hurries along the length of the big stick of wood all the way to its stump, then crosses and hurries puffing back, bent at the waist as he tries to peer through the tangle of limbs lining its length where Andy’s saw has stripped them from the trunk ...but there is no hole to be found: the tree has fallen evenly, sinking a few inches into the stony earth from its butt to its peak. Lee chooses a likely place and falls to his knees and begins pawing at the ground beneath the bark, like a dog after a gopher.