Chapter 77

 Les Gibbons exclaimed, pounding the floor beside him with a beer bottle. “ ’N’ if we’re lucky they’ll rip out the whole rat’s nest of the motherjumpers as they go stampedin’ past!” “And we can drop a few blasting sticks amongst the booms to give them a good start.” Evenwrite could feel his heart beginning to hammer. “Attaboy! Now we’re pickin’ cotton!” “Maybe even let a stick or two drop right in the mill.” Yessir, this was the way to get things done, old-fashioned or no! “Now we’re talkin’!” Gibbons struck the floor again. “Awright then, we gonna talk sic ’em or we gonna do sic ’em?” “Do, goddammit’hell! Jus’ like commandos. Let’s go, let’s go!” They managed to get one boom opened before the slippery, lurching logs spilled Evenwrite and two other men into the freezing black water. These three unfortunate commandos were swept off into the dark and, after a moment, could be heard cursing and shouting from a flooded clump of bam trees where they clung, too far from solid land to risk swimming, too cold to wait for one of the others to drive into town for a motorboat. There was no choice but go into the mill and phone for help from the nearest boat. “What’ll we tell him?” Howie Evans whispered as he stood, humpbacked and cold, dialing the flashlit wall phone in the mill. “Tell him we need help quick to keep three men from perishing!” “But I mean...what about the logs?” Howie whispered, holding his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. “McElroy is out there now wiring the cut back together. In the dark maybe he won’t notice a few logs missin’.” Hank arrived, as eager to help as ever. With his flash he and Joe Ben found the three men in the leafless thicket of bam saplings. The bony saplings rattled and clattered as the current swept through their skinny trunks, making them appear as cold and miserable as the shivering men who clung to them. They all three were prepared to start talking as soon as the boat achieved the security of solid land; each had created his own elaborate and logical-sounding reason for being out so late, so far from town, and so near the property of their enemy, but when Hank didn’t ask for reasons, did not even seem inclined to ask for their reasons, they wisely chose to keep silent, realizing that any alibi or excuse they offered would be received probably without question, maybe even without comment, and certainly without belief. “You boys looks a little wasted, Floyd. ...I tell you, come on here in the mill an’ we can get some coffee going.” “No.” Evenwrite declined. “No thanks. We got to—” “I’d offer you some hard stuff if I had some. Seems a shame. Joby, we ain’t got any brandy or bourbon, do we?” “I’m afraid not. Not here. Some at the house, though, if you’d care—” “That’s okay. We got to be going.” “That’s too bad. I hate to be a bad host. But say, I tell ya what: you come back tomorrow night an’ we’ll see if we can’t be better prepared.” The three men stood in a line, waiting the way children wait before the principal’s desk. “N-n-no, thanks, Hank,” Les chattered. “Uh—uh—we wouldn’t want to put you out.” “Les, by god, you should be gettin’ accustomed to this water.” “Yeah. Ain’t that the truth, Hank. Well, by gosh, I don’t have to tell you how obliged. Anyhow. I guess we ought to be goin’.” “Who’s out there on the road in the car? Some others? Floyd, you’ll tell ’em, won’t you, that I’m sorry I wasn’t better prepared. Will you tell ’em that? And tell ’em we’ll sure see to getting in some brandy or the like for the future.” All the next day Floyd spent in the bathtub, and used the whole new bottle of Vick’s. It was Thursday before he made another attempt to dissuade Hank. Alone this time, he drove up to Scaler’s bridge and parked his car out of sight up a back road; while the government men were talking with John Stamper in the little shack, he slipped out on the blind side with a hammer and a bag of tenpenny spikes. He managed to get four of the spikes driven out of sight beneath the bark of the logs before the sound of the shack door opening ran him back to the bushes. He waited there in the rain, shivering and chewing at his lip, until the truck went back up and returned with a new load; then he popped out again to plant a few more spikes. He knew he might have to mine hundreds of logs in this way to be sure of getting one into the mainsaw’s teeth, because most of the logs were being boomed up to be sold to WP. And so what if WP loses a few blades too? Serve both the sonsabitches right. He worked all day, and when dusk settled he complimented himself on a job thoroughly done. He dragged back to his car and drove into town. He ate the cold left-overs in the kitchen, then drove on in to see if news of a Stamper breakdown had yet reached the Snag. It had. Along with the news that the Stamper mill workers were all being transferred to woods work for the rest of the year. “McElroy said that Joe Ben said,” the first man Floyd met told him, “that Hank is got sawn lumber aplenty and was just looking for some excuse to move his whole crew into the woods to get at this WP contract.” Evenwrite didn’t say anything; he stood, silent and chilled, wondering why he wasn’t more surprised by the news. “An’ you know what?” the man went on. “You know what me ’n’ the boys an’ a lot of others reckon?” He shook his head slowly. “No. What is it you ’n’ the boys reckon?” “That Hank Stamper hisself brought off this breakdown for just such a reason. It’s just like him to pull a trick like that.” Evenwrite agreed and turned to go. He had almost reached the door when he heard his name called. Draeger was coming out of the toilet, buttoning his jacket. “Wait, Floyd. . . .” Dumbly, and still without surprise, he watched the man’s amiable face growing larger as it approached him down the double row of booths. “Wait just a moment.” Like one of the head-on shots of trains in a movie show. “I have something here for you.” Stopping a moment at a booth to pick up something, then looming forward again, not like something really moving closer but like one of them pictures of trains projected on a screen, crashing larger and larger onward without moving a goddam bit. “Hank Stamper was by looking for you. . . .” Till it’s right on top of you, blacking out the whole screen with its crashing, right on over you and it still ain’t moved; you ain’t even felt it. “He left a gift for you.” “Huh?” He shook himself from his reverie. “Gift?” “This. Hank Stamper asked if I wouldn’t give this to you. He said he was by your house but you weren’t there, so he came to the Snag. Here.” He took the brown bottle-shaped paper sack from Draeger by the neck, looking down at the twisted top. “Aren’t you going to open it? I must say you have more restraint than I do. A gift drives me nuts until I see what it is. The difference between a married man with family and a bachelor, I suppose. . . .” “I know what’s in it,” Floyd said in a flat voice. “It’s a bottle. So. Hank Stamper just come in? An’ said, ‘Give this to Floyd Evenwrite’? Is that what happened?” “No. He told me to tell you—ah, what was it? I’ve lost the exact words but he said something like, let’s see—it’ll surprise you—” Floyd watched the man pause to recall a message that he knew was no more lost to Draeger than it would be a surprise to him. “Oh yes, Hank said, ‘Give Floyd this brandy for me along with my sincerest thanks.’ Or something to that effect. Aren’t you going to open it? There’s something else in the sack. I could hear it tingling about. . . .” “No, I guess not. I know what that is too. It’s nails.” “Nails? Like carpentering nails?” “That’s right.” Draeger smiled and shook his head in amused puzzlement and winked at Teddy. “These boys up here are sometimes blamed difficult to fathom, aren’t they, Teddy?” “Yes sir.” I doubt that any boys anywhere are very difficult for you to fathom, Mr. Draeger.... The following Saturday night brought in another topnotch crowd. The long room pulsated with light blue smoke and the heavy blues beat of Rod’s guitar (Teddy had been forced to offer the band an additional three-fifty apiece to come in; although the deluge of despair didn’t hamper the alcohol sales, it stopped completely such frivolities as the tips that usually accounted for the bulk of the band’s take); the music flowed as melancholy and as free as dark draft beer. Ever since the November dark had settled down from the clouds the men had been swarming to the flickering lure of his neons like moths in a July twilight. Teddy rippled back and forth from tables to booths to bar in his crepe-soled haste—a plump, silent scurry that seemed actually the antithesis of movement—emptying ashtrays, filling glasses, spiriting away loose change with covert skill, and, tonight, barely hearing the old charge that he had been once again filling his empty Jack Daniels bottles with cheaper liquor. The charge was levied against him with such regularity—“Bust your fat little ass, Teddy, what sorta crap you giving us now!”— that he was sometimes afraid he would lose control and shout to the rooftops how much truth was in what the idiots considered merely a teasing accusation. “. . . I mean, Teddy boy, I ain’t one to complain about you cuttin’ expensive liquor with cheap—you know that; I’m about as easy a man to please as you’ll find any place, no highfalutin tastes or that sorta thing—but I will by god draw the motherin’ line on havin’ my bourbon diluted with Mennen’s Skin Bracer!” And the men would laugh, craning heads from booth and back bar to enjoy Teddy’s blushing reaction to the joke. It had become a once-, sometimes a twice-a-night ritual. In fact, he recently had become so tired of being accused of diluting with Mennen’s that he was currently contemplating just that. Not that it would make any difference: he knew that there wasn’t a man among them with taste civilized enough to tell anything more than the temperature of a liquid, just as surely as he knew that not a one suspected the truth of their jest. When he was reminded of this, the knowledge would fill him both with fury at the indictment (They have no right making such slanderous charges without proof!) and with a contempt that made it possible to keep the fury in control (Morons, if they only knew . . .) Lately, however, when confronted by the charge, the fury had become almost unmanageable: he would flutter his lashes and blush and mumble out a frightened denial, all the while vowing behind his fawning stammer: No more Ten High for these morons. They do not deserve it! Not even Bourbon De Luxe. From now on the Jack Daniels these morons get will come right out of a fruit jar and I hope they all go stone blind!—still apologizing out loud, of course, “Sir, I am very sorry,” and offering to stiffen the drink with another jigger free on the house. “Please, sir, let me—” The moron would always wave the offer aside—“Ah, fergit it, Teddy, fergit it. What the dickens: it ’uz worth the shavin’ lotion just seein’ you blush so pretty”—and, quite often, drop a few pieces of change on the bar with a kind of nervous magnanimity. “Here . . . keep the gravel.”