Sometimes a Great Notion (86 page)

“Sure! Sure we can, oh yeah, there ain’t nothing—”

“I was askin’ you, Hank. . . .”

I knew he was. I squinted through the blue film of cigarette smoke, out across the fern and salal and blackberry, through the brute black straight trunks of those trees down to the river, trying to ask myself, Can we or can’t we? But I didn’t know; I just couldn’t tell. The three of us he said. Meaning two and one old man. Two tired jacks and one old
crippled
man. It’s crazy, and I said to myself, and I knew I should say Nothing doing to the old man, say it’s too risky, forget it, flick it. . . .

But some way he didn’t seem like an old crippled man to me then. It wasn’t like I was standing there talking with the wild and woolly town character any more, but with some fierce young jack who had just walked up out of the years ready to spit on his palms and take over again. I looked at him, waiting there. What could I tell him? If he says we can whip it, all right, maybe he knows, let him take over. “I’m askin’ you, boy. . . .” Because all I know is that the only way you can keep this jack from out of the past from
trying
to whip it was with a club and a rope, so I say all right. “All right, Henry, let’s try it.”
You probably know more about this kind of logging than me and Joby put together. So all right, head out. You run it. I’m tired rassling it. I got other things on my mind. You take it. Me, just turn me on and aim me. That’s how I’d like it, anyhow. I’m tired, but I’ll work. If you take over. If you just turn me on and aim me it’s fine and dandy with this boy . . .
)

After Grissom had the effrontery to ask me to pay for the magazine I spilled coffee on, I decided to go mope elsewhere. I crossed the street and entered the Sea Breeze Cafe and Grill, the very apotheosis of short-order America: two waitresses in wilted uniforms chatting at the cash register; lipstick stain on coffee mugs; bleak array of candy; insomniac flies waiting out the rain; a plastic penful of doughnuts; and, on the wall above the Coca-Cola calendar, the methodical creaking creep of a bent second hand across a Dr. Pepper clock . . . the perfect place for a man to sit and commune with nature.

I climbed onto one of the leatherette stools, ordered coffee, and purchased freedom for one of the penned-up doughnuts. The shortest of the waitresses brought my order, took my money, made my change, and returned to the cash register to play her accordion of neck to her bored companion . . . never really acknowledging my presence to herself. I ate the doughnut and reiterated my woes with fresh coffee, trying not to think ahead, trying not to ask myself, What am I waiting for? The second hand creaked a meaningless dirge. An ancient refrigerator complained in the cluttered kitchen, and the second hand cranked out a dreary fare of short-order time—tepid seconds, stale minutes, the drab diet that He Who Hesitates must always be satisfied with . . .

As the rain quickened on the slopes the three men set about work. Hank jerked the starter rope on his saw and wondered why the saw should feel so feather-light (
just take it over and it’s dandy with me. . . .
) when his arms felt so heavy. Henry walked the length of the log, looking for a place to set a check, and wished he’d brought a plastic bag or some damn thing to wrap around his cast so’s it wouldn’t soak up water and weigh him down even worse than ordinary. On the other hand Joe Ben, leaping back downhill to the log he had been working on when interrupted by Hank’s whistle, felt as though the mud caking his boots was actually becoming lighter. He felt even more nimble and buoyant than usual. Everything was going fine. He’d been worried over something earlier that morning—can’t even
remember
now—but everything was turning out just the way he liked it: old Henry’s dramatic arrival, the news of the tides, the planning in terse, muted voices, that brass-band feeling rising among them, beating out we
got
to make that first down, we
got
to, and you block for me, Joby, and I’ll tear ’em apart! Yeah boy! That brassy beat of high-school idealism and determination that he liked best of all: beating out we got, got to, got to! over and over until the words became we will, we will, we
will!
—and when I put my hand on the log and vault over it I feel like if I don’t hold back I’ll just sail right off in the sky—the log’s ready to go—it was ready when Hank whistled—all the dickens needs now’s a good shove to get it over the rock it’s hung against. Let’s
see
here . . .

Joe circled the end of the log and looked at the jack. It was screwed out to its maximum length, with one end anchored against a rock and the other biting into the bark of the log. To unscrew it meant that the log would fall back a few inches while he anchored the jack against another rock. “Bug that,” he said aloud, laughing, and told himself, “Don’t give a
inch!
” He wedged his compact little body in on top of the jack, with his shoulders against the rock and his boots against the log. I give a yeah-h-h
shove be thou
you dickens
cast
into the uh uh
sea!
Yeah! She teeters over the rock, rolls against a stump picking up speed, spins off the stump, and slides straight as an arrow
whew
down the hill to within a bare half-yard of the river! Good deal, I’d say. “Hey . . .” Joe stood up and shouted over his shoulder at Hank and old Henry, watching him. “See
that?
Oh man; no sense messin’ around, the way I see it. Now, you fellas want me to kick
that
one downhill and save you the effort?”

Laughing, he skidded down the slope with the jack light under his arm and his boots flying. And the little transistor bumping and squeaking against his neck . . .

 

All righty now—I screw the jack short again and
wedge
it under the log and
twist!
He watched the butt of it bite the juicy bark. The wooden screw of the implement lengthened out with his cranking. The log rolled a few feet, paused—
this
time she pitches crashing through shredding fern blackberry vines and
into
the river. Yes sir, all righty,
there!
He picked up his jack, slung it across his shoulder by the strap, and swarmed up the hill on all fours—who-so-
ever!
—snorting and whooping as he came, like a water spider fleeing to high ground. His face was scratched and red when he reached the second log, where Hank worked the saw. “Hankus, ain’t you finished bucking this thing
yet?
Henry, it looks like me’n you have to carry our load an’ then some to make up for this loafer!”

Then vaulted over the log, the mud on his boots turning to wings: and whosoever shall not doubt in his heart, he will, by golly, he
will . . . !

In her shack Indian Jenny hummed over an astrologer’s chart that was patterned mysteriously with glass rings
interlacing!
Lee sipped coffee at the Sea Breeze. At the house Viv finished up the last of the dishes and wondered what to start on next. With Jan and the kids staying at the new place, there’s not so much rush. And it’s nice to set my own pace. I enjoy Jan and the kids here, and I’ll miss them when they move into the other place, but it’s nice to be here and set my own pace. Boy oh boy, is it quiet just here alone . . .

Standing in the center of the big living room, watching the river, feeling distracted and flushed, anxious almost . . . like I’m expecting something to happen. One of the kids to holler, I guess. I know what’ll calm me down; take a nice long hot soak in the tub. Aren’t
you
the Miss Lazy Britches? But gee, is it still and quiet . . .

Hank wiped his nose on the wet cuff of his sweat shirt sticking from his poncho, then grabbed the saw again and dug into the trunk of the tree before him, feeling the relaxation of labor, of simple uncomplicated labor, run through his body like a warm liquid. . . . (Like a sleep, sort of. More relaxing than some sleeps a guy could name. I never minded work so much. I could of got along right well just doing a plain eight-to-five with the bull telling what to do and where to do it. If he had been a decent bull and fairly reasonable about that what and where. Yes I could of. . . .) Everything was going pretty good. The logs fell good and the wind stayed down. Henry helped where he was able, picking the trees, figuring the troughs, arranging the screwjacks in place, using his experience instead of bones he knew were brittle as chalk . . . wheezing, spitting, thinking a man
can
whup it, even he don’t have nothin’ but knowhow left, even his legs like butter and his arms and hands like cracking glass and he don’t have nothin’ but his knowhow left—he can
still
help whup it! Downhill Joe Ben paced off twenty-five steps and cut through his log, feeling the screaming vibration of the chain saw tingle up his arms and accumulate in his back muscles like a charge of electrical power . . . building, yeah, rising oh yeah and a
little
more and I’ll just
grab
this log up and
bust
it over my knee! Watch if I don’t. . . .

On the counter of the Sea Breeze Cafe and Grill was a selection box for our youth’s music. To pass the wait (I told myself I was waiting for my father to show up at the Snag across the street) I took a survey of what Young America was singing these days. Let’s see . . . we’ve got Terry Keller “Coming with Summer”—very neat—a “Stranger on the Shore” called—s’help me—Mister Acker Bilk. Earl Grant “Swinging Gently”; Sam Cook “Twistin’ the Night Away”; Kingston Trio “Jane Jane Janing” . . . Brothers Four . . . Highwaymen (singing “Bird-man of Alcatraz,” a ballad, based on the movie, that is based on the book, that is based on the life of a lifer who has probably never even
heard
of the Highwaymen . . .) the Skyliners . . . Joey Dee and the Starlighters . . . Pete Hanly doing “Dardanella” (how did that slip in?), Clyde McSomebody asking “Let’s Forget about the Past” . . . and currently number one, at least in the Sea Breeze Cafe and Grill, a waitress with three pounds of nose under thirty ounces of powder accompanying herself on a tub of dishes while she sings “Why Hang Around?”

I muttered in my coffee cup. “Because I’m waiting for my daddy to come get me.” Which convinced no one. . . .

The hillside rang with the tight whine of cutting; the sound of work in the woods was like insects in the walls. Numb clubs of feet registered the blow against the cold earth only by the pained jarring in the bones. Henry dragged a screwjack to a new log. Joe Ben sang along with his radio:

 

The forest fought against the attack on its age-old domain with all the age-old weapons nature could muster: blackberries strung out barbed barricades; the wind shook widow-makers crashing down from high rotted snags; boulders reared silently from the ground to block slides that had looked smooth and clear a moment before; streams turned solid trails into creeping ruts of icy brown lava. . . . And in the tops of the huge trees, the very rain seemed to work at fixing the trees standing, threading the million green needles in an attempt to stitch the trees upright against the sky.

But the trees continued to fall, gasping long sighs and ka-whumping against the spongy earth. To be trimmed and bucked into logs. To be coaxed and cajoled downhill into the river with unflagging regularity. In spite of all nature could do to stop it.

 

As the trees fell and the hours passed, the three men grew accustomed to one another’s abilities and drawbacks. Few words actually passed between them; they communicated with the unspoken language of labor toward a shared end, becoming more and more an efficient, skilled team as they worked their way across the steep slopes; becoming almost one man, one worker who knew his body and his skill and knew how to use them without waste or overlap.

Henry chose the trees, picked the troughs where they would fall, placed the jacks where they would do the most good. And stepped back out of the way.
Here she slides!
See? A man can whup it goddammit with nothin’ but his experience an’ stick-to-’er, god
dam
if he can’t. . . . Hank did the falling and trimming, wielding the cumbersome chain saw tirelessly in his long, cable-strong arms, as relentless as a machine; working not fast but steadily, mechanically, and certainly far past the point where other fallers would have rested, pausing only to refuel the saw or to place a new cigarette in the corner of his mouth when his lips felt the old one burning near—taking the pack from the pouch of his sweat shirt, shaking a cigarette into view, withdrawing it with his lips . . . touching the old butt for the first time with his muddy gloves when he removed it to light the new smoke. Such pauses were brief and widely separated in the terrible labor, yet he almost enjoyed returning to work, getting back in the groove, not thinking, just doing the work just like it was eight to five and none of that other crap to worry about, just letting somebody turn me on and aim me at what and where is just the way I like it. The way it used to be. Peaceful. And simple. (
And I ain’t thinking about the kid, not in hours I ain’t wondered where he is.
) . . . And Joe Ben handled most of the screwjack work, rushing back and forth from jack to jack, a little twist here, a little shove there, and whup! she’s turnin’, tip-pin’, heading out downhill! Okay—get down there an’ set the jacks again, crank and uncrank right back an’ over again. Oh yeah, that’s the one’ll do it.
Shooooom
, all the
way
, an’ here comes another one, Andy old buddy, big as the ark . . . feeling a mounting of joyous power collecting in his back muscles, an exhilaration of faith rising with the crash of each log into the river. Whosoever believes in his heart shall cast
mountains
into the sea an’ Lord knows what other stuff . . . then heading back up to the next log—running, leaping, a wingless bird feathered in leather and aluminum and mud, with a transistor radio bouncing and shrill beneath his throat: