Raising Wrecker

CHAPTER NINE





It was a giant tree, the trunk misshapen by fire and encrusted with lichens, and it dominated the slope with its girth and the broad circle of shade cast by its canopy. It was a mammoth, a monster, a dinosaur even, a relict fir left standing when its regiment fell to loggers a hundred years before. Noises flattened beneath it. Its hollow had housed bear and cat and bird and the occasional juvenile delinquent escaped from the boys’ reformatory in Lassen. In a storm it waved its limbs and threatened to uproot and roll itself and half the hillside down to dam the creek and block the county road below. It was a public hazard, the owners declared. It was an insurance spike. And it was square in the intended footprint of their new house, a modern extravagance planned to poise on the hillside and command a view of the sea.

It would have to go.

The contractor was a youngish guy with a bulbous nose and pants that sagged under a lazy gut. He was paying on his equipment like he couldn’t believe and his naturally generous impulses were constrained by the red that showed up in his checkbook too often for comfort. It had crossed his mind more than once, recently, that success in the construction business might require more than a strong back and an unfettered delight in the orderly repetition of milled lumber. This house was a chance to make a name for himself and put some change in the bank—or at least keep his machines on the job and out of hock. He was itching to start. And the first item of business was the tree.

Too wet, Len said.

So the contractor fussed and fretted and set his crew to work on a kitchen remodel where they tripped over one another and on an otherwise uneventful Thursday started a fracas that left one guy fired and another sidelined on workers’ comp. The contractor drummed his fingers. He had four solid guys left and a deadline for completion that would cost him a hundred bucks for every day he went over. Probably dry enough now, he told Len.

Maybe, Len said. But then it rained again for one full week and they had to wait that out.

And then suddenly it was springtime. Len went out in the morning and smelled the air. Wrecker came walking up the drive and saw him poised there, pensive, his chin lifted and his gaze taking in the surroundings, and knew something was up.

“What?”

“Good morning to you, too,” Len said. He looked at him appraisingly until Wrecker, uncomfortable, stood straighter. “What do you think. Is it time to cut that tree?”

Wrecker’s face brightened a beat faster than he could shuffle and yawn to hide it. “Depends,” he said, his voice still sleepy. “You figure the rains are over?”

“Window of opportunity. Help me load the gooseneck.”

Together they tied on to the long trailer the saws and the big winch and the logging chains and everything they’d need to take the tree down and carry it back, in multiple loads of manageable pieces, to Len’s yard for milling. They piled into the cab of the heavy diesel and started down the mountain. They stopped in Mattole for coffee and Len got on the telephone. Meet us out there, he told the contractor.

Thank you Jesus Mary and Joseph, the young man whispered.

He had the crew there to help. By the time Len and Wrecker arrived, there were half a dozen men milling around in eager anticipation. In a land of big trees, the only ones that rivaled this in size were sitting protected in the government groves. The grandfathers of these men had cut trees this big and bigger, thrown their brawn and hubris against the massive forests and held dances on the stumps. It was a lost era of plenty, of flapjack and ham breakfasts and untrimmed beards, of locomotives and mules. Len looked around drily. Styrofoam cups littered the roadside. “Just one tree,” he said. “Won’t take but the two of us to bring her down.” The men shuffled their feet and looked around sheepishly, but they remained. Everyone wanted the moment of falling. Everyone wanted the thud as the trunk hit the ground.

Len and Wrecker set about their work. A tree this size—nearly two hundred feet tall by Len’s estimation, with a trunk it would take three grown men to girdle, arms outstretched—ought by rights to come down in pieces, Len reminded the boy. Safer. Easier to control. Better all around. And impossible, in this case, with that landslide higher up that left no way to get the crane in above. The best they could do was to plan the fall, working the slope and the soil and the tree’s shape, to lay her down as gently as they could. See, there? Len pointed and gestured and mapped his plan so the boy understood. Wrecker watched and nodded. Yes, he got it. Yes. And then Len watched him clamp the tree spikes to his boots, rig his ropes, and climb into the upper branches to trim selectively and fine-tune the weight.

Yes, Len said softly to himself. Like that. Exactly.

Felling any tree was a dance with gravity. No kind of science alone could predict which way a tree could twist, and Len knew to lay a hand on the bark, to listen to the roots. It wasn’t magic, just common sense and a kind of intuition that developed after nearly forty years in the field. Anybody could muscle a tree down. All it took was a chain saw and enough gas in the can to keep its noisy little motor running. Of course, anybody could be crushed by a wayward fall, too. Anybody could be impaled by a sharp branch. Anybody—no matter how careful, how experienced—could hit a pocket of compressed twist in a limb that caused the saw to buck and twist its teeth into the operator’s thigh. Len had the scars to prove it.

Anybody, Len thought as he watched Wrecker work his way back down, could have a moment of inattention and tumble from great height.

Len’s breath came easier when the boy was safely grounded. “Nice,” he told him. The boy nodded. A streak of pitch discolored his cheekbone. Len could swear he’d grown taller while aloft.

“Have at it, old man,” Wrecker said, grinning. He pulled the cord start on the thirty-inch McCulloch and settled the engine, passed the saw to Len, and stood back.

Len eased its whirring blade into the thick bark of the tree. The motor pitch dipped and a stream of pale dust spewed from the cut. He lifted the blade back out, repositioned it over the first cut, and angled down until the two kerfs met. Then he removed the blade and stilled the saw. Wrecker passed him the small ax and Len set his feet again, his hands gripping the ash handle. He swung and the sharp head bit into the trunk. When he pulled it out again the wedge came with it.

“No turning back now,” he said to the boy.

Len worked the trunk methodically, whittling chunks from it in strategic places and deepening the cut behind the direction of fall. The wind was still but it could come up at any time, and he worked steadily, aiming to ground the tree as quickly as he safely could. Down on the road came the murmur of idle conversation, someone’s sharp laugh punctuating the hum. Len kept his mind focused on the tree. He ate what Wrecker brought him and never let the tree leave his sight. It was a wild card, standing, and he knew better than to turn his back on it. He sent the boy downslope for tools; he had him sharpen the chain and refuel the tank. When he got close to dropping it he sent Wrecker below with instructions to stay there. “And don’t let nobody else close, neither.” There was blood in his eye. “I don’t care what they say. Until I yell the all-clear, you keep them on that pavement.” He made the boy promise not to move from his post. Just because the tree was on the ground wouldn’t mean it was safe, he warned him. Len’s face was ruddy and his pale lips rode it like stripes of gristle in a tough cut of meat. “Could roll and crush you. A slope like this? Ugly. You want to know ugly? Ugly.”

Len waited until the boy scrambled down to the road and made the others gather a good distance back. He felt the sweat cool on his back in the spring breeze. Then he lifted the saw and made the last few cuts and the great tree foundered and fell.

The saw stopped and for a moment there was silence and the held breath of every person watching. They couldn’t see Len from where they stood. The sun was shining and dust motes rode the air currents. Then a growl, as though low in the throat, and a puff of breeze as the canopy swayed, and the growl rose to a grind and then a tearing, more like a shriek, as the massive tree began to fall and the men watching took another step back and a wind barreled toward them, the weight of the tree moving quickly through air, the trunk turning like a cat to correct, a split second of splinter as the remaining branches broke the fall and then a deafening crash, a tremendous thud, a tremor in the earth they felt in the soles of their feet as the giant came to earth.

The men rushed forward. Len was nowhere. They hastened up the slope.

Wrecker stumbled back when the tree began to fall. He planted his feet to steady himself and after some gaping seconds the shock waves galloped across the ground to climb his legs and rearrange his chest. He absorbed the blow into every cell of his body, felt it change the chemistry of his brain, shake into shape some amorphous category of soul. And after the noise abated still he stood and let the slow seep of warmth—the afterglow of destruction—feed his muscles and flush his face.

“Kid.” The big nose and generous face of the contractor loomed into Wrecker’s field of vision. “Better get up there. Your old man’s a little tee’d off at the moment.” He peered at the boy’s dazed expression. “Kid? Something the matter with you?”

Wrecker shook his head clear. He brought his gaze to focus on the road, on the gravel, on the knees of the contractor’s jeans. He looked up at the man’s eyes. He shook his head again and let the tremor continue down his spine. Something enormous had fallen and he had been a part of bringing it down. He felt weirdly superhuman and insignificant at the same time and he wanted the feeling to last and when it wore off he wanted to destroy something else to get it back. A drug had entered his bloodstream and he was frantic for more of it.

For one brief moment he had let go of himself. Just for then, for that one violent, rending, concussive moment, he had not had to hold himself up.

“Boy?” The contractor reached out and grabbed Wrecker’s arm. “Take it easy, there, son. Why don’t you sit down for a minute. Get your breath.”

Wrecker snarled and shrugged him off. Then he rushed up the slope toward Len.