Chapter 46

In spite of the delay the swift up-river tide seemed to double the speed of their boat and they arrived at the waiting crummy still way ahead of schedule. The crummy started easily. The civet cat that boarded under the hood fled in his usual humpbacked fit of pique but for the first time since he’d moved in fired no parting volley at his tormentors. Uncle John arrived without a hangover and cheerfully offered a stick of Beeman’s to everyone; Andy played a gay tune on his mouth organ instead of his usual morning dirge as they drove; and just as they crested Breakleg Ridge a few miles from the show a big four-point sidled out onto the road and practically flagged them down. As they skidded to a stop, he sidled off the road to a leafy clearing, then waited politely for Hank to claw his little .22 Hi-Standard out of the toolbox and fit one of the half-dozen baby nipples he carried in the glove compartment over the barrel. The shot made a small spitting sound, shredding the nipple and nicking the buck’s spine just behind the neck where Hank had aimed; the deer dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. Joe and Hank and Andy, working side by side with a speed that would have won respect at the gutting bench at the salmon cannery, bled the big deer, cleaned him, severed his head and hoofs, and had the evidence buried in less than five minutes. There was even a hollow stump next to the clearing the deer had chosen. “Mighty accommodating fellow,” Hank acknowledged as he heaved the carcass into the hollow and covered it with a spray of huckleberry. “Oh you dingdang right!” Joe Ben had said. “We’re in God’s pocket today. Ever’thing is gonna be milk an’ honey! Ever’thing is gonna be abundant! Ever’thing is gonna be with us today ’cause ain’t it obvious? Ain’t it? The Holy Signals are on the Stampers’ side today, you just watch if they ain’t.” Even the donkey, even that vengeful conglomeration of wire and noise and time-brittled cast iron seemed to have been affected by the Holy Signals. During the whole day dragging two-ton logs back to the spar tree, while Joe perched on its seat, singing against the shriek of the engine, jamming levers, tromping pedals with the beat of the song as he played the machine like some infernal organ, it had broken down only once. There was a screaming jolt; the gears had frozen in the cable drum. But even then the Signals were consistent, the luck held; instead of having to shut down to send for parts, Hank waded into the trouble with a pair of pliers and a ballpeen hammer and overcame it in such short order that he’d scarcely used any of the usual names he kept reserved for the malingering machine. All the rest of the day it ran like a clock. In fact, all that day the equipment—the chain saws, the cat, the yarder—had behaved in a manner as polite and accommodating as that of the buck. “Do you realize,” Hank said, “that we sent eight truckloads down to the river today. By God, eight. That’s the biggest cutting since—Lord, since I don’t even remember, probably since we were working that state park where it was all roaded and flat, and I feel pretty good if anybody wants to know, pretty motherin’ good!” He released the steering handle of the motor, and the boat rushed on straight as an arrow while he stretched and cracked his vertebrae. As he came out of the stretch he punched Lee playfully on the shoulder. “What about it, bub? How do you feel? You probably threw cable around more logs than ever before; you noticin’ any repercussions?” Lee rolled his shoulders against the pull of the suspenders. “It’s strange,” he reflected, half embarrassed. “I don’t know, but I’m not really so tired, now that you mention it. Do you suppose I’ve become immune?” Hank winked at Joe Ben. “You mean to tell me you don’t feel like you’ll ‘expire of exhaustion’ before you climb up to that room? Why, fancy that.” “To be perfectly honest, Hank, I feel halfway decent for the first time since I was sentenced to that cable.” Hank returned to his motor, ducking his chin and smiling into his fist. Lee saw the smile and added hurriedly, “But don’t think I’m being lulled into some false sense of optimism by my recovery. Everything just happened to go well today. Pure coincidence. And it may happen again once in the next month, though I don’t count on it. It may happen, another of Joe’s blessful days, but would either of you care to bet some money that we have anything but the usual hell tomorrow? Care to bet we get another eight truckloads? Huh? I didn’t think so.” Joe Ben aimed his finger at Lee. “But you got to admit this was a blessful day, don’t you? Oh yeah!” Joe beat his fist gleefully in his palm. “You got to admit I was right about today’s signals.” “Joby,” Hank said, “I ever find the tiniest proof that days like this comes from mystical signals I swear I’ll start goin’ to church with you and help you figure the signals myself.” Lee shaded his eyes against the sun behind Joe’s shoulder. “I will have to say, Joe, that the woods actually seemed more benevolent today. No vines reached to trip me. No branches tried to snatch my eyes out. And most of all, you know most of all what I noticed?—and I don’t know if this means anything to you dedicated lumberjacks—but I noticed that all day long there were holes under all the logs. Saints be praised, holes! There is nothing more maddening than throwing a cable over a log the size of a Queen Mary, only to find you have to tear a hole under the monster to get the cable around.” “Oh! Hey by golly.” Joe Ben laughed, pounding Hank on the knee. “You know what’s happening? You see what’s comin’ over this boy? He’s getting the call. He’s hearin’ the gospel of the woods. He’s forsakin’ all that college stuff and he’s finding a spiritual rediscovery of Mother Nature.” “Horse manure,” Hank disagreed softly. “Lee’s gettin’ in condition is all. This is making a man out of him. He’s toughening up.” Joe Ben barely paused. “Same thing, don’t you see? Sure. Now, I want you boys to think about all the signals—” “Horse manure,” Hank snorted, interrupting Joe’s expanding theory. “I still say all’s happening is he’s getting in shape. When he showed up here three weeks ago he was dying of diarrhea of the brain. Lord almighty, Joby, you give me three weeks to shape somebody up, hell yes the signals are going to be right!” “Yeah but—yeah but those three weeks! wasn’t they more’n sweat an’ stumble? God helps them, don’t it say, that helps themselves? You got to consider all the facets . . .” And, shifting himself to a more comfortable position, Joe Ben folded his hands behind his head, gazed happily at the clouds overhead, and launched into an exuberant theory involving the physical body, the spiritual soul, choker chains, astrological signs, the Book of Ecclesiastes, and all the members of the Giant baseball team, who, it seemed, had all been blessed by Brother Walker and the whole congregation at Joe’s request the very day before their current winning streak! Lee smiled as Joe Ben talked, but gave the sermon only a part of his attention. He rubbed his thumb over the knobs of callus building in his palm and wondered vaguely at the strange flush of warmth he was feeling. What was happening to him? He closed his eyes and watched the last rays of the sun dance across his eyelids. He lifted his chin toward the color....What was this feeling? A pair of pintails flushed from the rushes, started up by Joe Ben’s joyous arguments, and Lee felt the drumming of those wings beat at his chest in delirious cadence. He took a deep breath, shuddering . . . The river moves. The dog pants in the cold moonlight. Lee searches his bed until he finds the book of matches. He relights his minuscule cigarette and writes again, with it burning between his lips: And Peters, as you shall hear, more than memory is affected by this country: My very reason was for a time debauched—I was beginning to like it, god help me. . . . The boat touched in against the dock. The hounds boiled from beneath the house. Joe Ben sprang out to grab the bow rope and flip it about a post. From the bank, plucking stiff and crinkly linens off the clothesline, Viv watched the three men step from the boat into the pack of dogs. “You’re early,” she called. “Early an’ bright,” Joe Ben called back. “An’ it’s been like that all day long. Brought home a little present, too.” She watched Hank and Lee heave something from the bottom of the boat, wrapped in heavy tarpaulin. Hank settled it into his shoulder and walked grinning toward her as the hounds leaped for sniffs at the bundle. Viv put her hands on her hips, the sheets beneath one arm. “All right, what have we poached today?” Joe came bounding up to Viv, bearing a swollen neckerchief. “We run across another one of them horned rabbits up in the hills, Viv, and Hank just had to put him out of his misery. That’s the kind of day I mean. Here.” He thrust the neckerchief to her, pendulous and bloody with its burden. “We thought you might wanta fry up his liver for supper tonight.” “Get that dirty thing away from my sheets now. Hello, honey. Hello, Lee; I see you have blood on your sweat shirt too; are you part of this felony?” “Only before and after the fact; I allowed the crime and now I plan to partake of the spoils. So I’m afraid I’m innocent of nothing but the deed.” “Let’s tote him on out to the barn and skin him out, bub. Joby, would you call Coos Bay and see they get to work findin’ another screw gear for that bastardly drum?” “I’ll do it. I will do it. An’ what about another couple chokers? The way Lee was throwing that one of his today it’ll be wore about by the time we get a extra.” “Is the old man home, Viv?” “Before dark? Before that crowd in the Snag goes to supper?” Hank laughed, leaning into the weight of the deer as he mounted the ramp. “Well, you go on an’ get that liver started; if the old tomcat ain’t home by the time it’s done, then we’ll eat without him. C’mon, bub, if you plan to partake of this dog you better damn well plan on helpin’ skin him. . . .” At the Snag Indian Jenny bangs through the screen and stands blinking a moment as her sullen, mud-colored eyes grow accustomed to the light. She sees old Henry, then looks quickly away, momentarily confused. She sees Ray and Rod and makes for them past the row of barstools, moving purposefully, squat and blunt and pushing her cedar-hewn face before her as one might push a war shield. On this shield of cheekbone and forehead and chin are dabs of make-up that are arranged differently every day, though the expression beneath the make-up never changes. When her pension check arrives every month and she comes in to sit and celebrate the government’s generosity by drinking one bourbon-over-snuff after another until a primitive council-fire music is kindled behind her dull eyes and she rises to shuffle about the room in a heavy-footed dance, and always stumbles and always falls . . . always across a table of fishermen or bushelers or truck-drivers who take no offense because they are always drunker than she (the townspeople talk of Jenny’s canny skill at never falling over a man less drunk than she is), and then rises and takes a sleeve between stubby nail-painted fingers and squints into the face at the end of it: “You’re drunk. You come on now. I’ll take you home all right.” But even then, with her prize in tow as she weaves out of the bar, the shield never changes, the expression stays, still somewhere between blunt ferocity and brute pathos. Now she bears down on the Saturday Night Dance Band. They note her approach and smile their Saturday Night smiles; Jenny is a big tipper when she requests a song. Ray holds up his hand. “Hey there, Jenny girl.” She stops inches short of bowling them over and blinks down, nearsighted and fierce from her near encounter with Henry. “You boys play too fast last week. This week you play slower, you hear me? Then maybe somebody gets to dance except them little dittybops. Here. . . .” She dips into the pocket of her gold-fringed shirt and brings forth a snarl of bills. She separates two dollars and presses them firmly on top of the table as though gluing them there. “Slow tunes.” “Hey, Jenny girl; many thanks, many thanks.” “Okay then.” “And this Saturday we play so nice and slow you’ll think we was drugged. Sit down a while, why don’t you? Relax. Dig the juke—” She has already turned and is purposefully heading for the door; a busy, purposeful woman with a tight schedule of errands just such as this to keep, and no time for jukebox folderol. When we was sixteen, we courted each other. . . .