Spoonwood (21 page)

17

THE WOLF PINE

I
stay away from people, especially other kids, for a long time (Lord knows they are easy to avoid in the woods, because they make so much noise and they rarely take notice). I imagine myself a wild animal, and so I have an animal fear of people. Well, it isn't fear exactly. It's suspicion that in dealing with people I am dealing with Unpredictability, which is what bears and humans have in common. You never know what a bear or a person is going to do, because they're not sure themselves. Another reason, according to Doc Mendy, is Dad. He never actually warned me against the human race, but everything in his behavior told me to watch out. I am not particularly curious about people. They don't strike me as any more or less interesting than, say, the daily life of a chipmunk living in a firewood pile. What gets me tangled up in human beings is the challenge of sneaking up on them. The key is get above them and don't move if they happen to look in your direction. I watch the trails from trees.

People, like animals, can be categorized. Each group has different habits and habitat and has to be stalked accordingly. My categories include kids, loggers, hikers, snowmobilers, and poachers. I write about my observations, and Grandma Purse corrects
my papers for grammar and style and spelling but does not comment on the rightness or wrongness of my activities and opinions.

The most clueless of forest creatures are human children. They make too much noise, and they tend to get scared for no reason; as they age, they become destructive and disrespectful. From my hidden perches in the trees, I watch teenagers shoot at trees with their guns; I watch them party down and leave their empties behind in the woods; I watch their struggles to fornicate; I watch them argue and weep and laugh at nothing at all. I vow never to be a teenager.

Hikers, cross-country skiers, and snowmobilers have a few things in common. They stick mainly to trails. They tend to look straight ahead (and miss 90 percent of the scene). They are always on the move. They are rarely found alone. They are easy to locate and spy on. I'll climb a tree just off a trail, sit on a branch, and watch. Snowmobilers I understand—the fast ride, the cold air blasting in their faces, the excuse to dress up in funny clothes. I figure cross-country skiers are looking for the same thrills but don't have the money to buy a snowmobile. Or maybe the noise of the machines annoys them (it annoys me). What I can't understand is the hikers.

I walk the woods, but I always have a reason. Hikers walk for the sake of walking. They have no purpose but the next step forward. If they stop to look around it's from the top of a cliff, which doesn't make much sense to me. If a person's kick is a scenic vista, why go in the woods, where the vistas are mainly obscured by the trees? I suppose some of the hikers walk the woods for exercise, but I can't sympathize with the concept of exercise. Why would anybody want to exert themselves just for the sake of exerting themselves when there is always plenty of work to do that is exertion enough? I conclude that because of those ugly backpacks and their peculiar clothes—big, clunky boots, short pants, funny hats—hikers are ashamed to be seen in public, and that is why they go into the woods. Their walking is no more than straight-line neurotic pacing.

Loggers on the trust lands are not allowed to do their work with skidders and feller bunchers (don't you just love that name?).
On the Salmon Forest Trust Conservancy horses are used to drag the logs out. I enjoy spying on the woodcutters. They refer to each other as “pardner.” “Hey pardner, you got a cigarette for a tired man?” Or, “This is my pardner, he's more feller than buncher.” (Actually, nobody said that, but it gets the point across.) The pardners live in a handmade house of rough-cut pine boards on an upland farm, no neighbors, on a dirt road. Obadiah Handy, like Dad, is a townie. His family has lived in Darby since before the stone age. But the Handys all died out or left town. Obadiah was alone. One day he had a chimney fire from creosote buildup. The fire leaked through the crumbling bricks and burned the house down and the adjoining barn, destroying not only dairy cows and buildings but all the farm equipment. No insurance. Obadiah did save his late father's prize Percherons. The draft horses had been his father's hobby, entered in pulling competitions at fairs. Obadiah could have sold the farm to a developer, for surely he did not want to farm, but he liked his land. “It's all I know or can feel,” I hear him say to his pardner. For almost six months, he lived in the only structure left on his property, a shed. And then he met his future pardner, and they built their strange abode. Obadiah leased out his acreage to a working farmer and went into the horse-logging business.

I obtain the following information from Katharine. Charley Snow had showed up at the commune in the 1970s. He lived in my school bus home. He had been a draft dodger and peace activist. When the commune closed Charley stayed on in Darby. He liked the land; he was into organic farming, alternative energy, and handmade housing. He and Obadiah met at a contra dance. Obadiah called him Chahley. In fact everybody in Darby called Charley Chahley until he began calling himself Chahley, even if he never lost his New York accent. Obadiah is big and slow-moving, a scratch-your-head kind of thinker. Chahley is quick and impulsive, with a high falsetto voice and an aggressive manner. He talks a mile a minute, as much with body motion as mouth. In fact, he sometimes breaks out in a modified dance when he speaks. Chahley designed their house, though Obadiah did most of the work on it.

In their business dealings Chahley does all the talking. Loggers have to be pretty agile in the thickets of business as well as the woods. They have to make deals with consulting foresters, wealthy landowners, independent-minded truckers, and saw mill superintendents. Chahley won't stand for criticism of the men's work. He gives long lectures on the efficacy (his word) of horse-logging. He likes to dicker. By contrast, Obadiah is so shy that he blushes when he is asked a question, and he can't seem to hold eye contact with anyone or speak to a stranger and make sense. But in the woods, when the loggers are alone and there is work to be done, Obadiah gives the orders and Chahley obeys.

The horses are both geldings. Francis is mainly sienna-colored, with a big, almost white rump, a quietly stubborn beast. Obadiah talks sweet to him. “Now Francis, I know you think this work is beneath you, but believe me you're doing the world a favor. Now pull.” Reluctantly, Francis pulls. Fenwick is gray with black spots and has long silky hair just above his hooves. He is smaller than Francis, not as strong, but he always takes the lead, and he never complains; in fact, he likes the work for the very reason that it is work; in attitude he is an “equine existentialist,” which is what Chahley calls him.

One day the men are in a part of the trust I've overlooked because it is high up but ordinary—just unbroken woods, trees and rocks not particularly noteworthy and off the logging road a couple hundred yards, no views. The ground is covered with short moosewood trees, whose big leaves hide me well but obscure my view. I don't really know where the loggers are, though I can smell their horses and hear the chain saws running. I move slowly through the moose wood and come out into a clearing, under the deep shade of a huge lone pine. Actually, it's several pines that have grown together and formed a giant, ten or twelve feet across and rising far above all the trees in the neighborhood. I wonder whether the pines have actually become one.

“One!” I shout to the tree, and my voice returns in echo. Suddenly, I am no longer interested in the woodcutters. I want to climb that tree.

It is easy going, because dead branches project out like ladder steps every which way for the first thirty feet. After that I have to fight my way through living branches heavy with pine needles. Even if I fall I will land in a tangle of other branches. After more climbing, I break out of the dense part of the tree, and I can smell the sun in the pine needles. Eventually I reach a natural platform, where branches cross over each other and the view opens up. I can see where the tree has grown around charred wood. Apparently lightning hit the tree decades ago, and the tree (or trees?) healed over in such a way as to create a platform of maybe two hundred square feet.

I sit and gaze out at the world. Heck, there is enough room up here for a ping pong table, a couch, and a TV; I am above the crowns of the maples, oaks, and birches below. I see Grace Pond in the distance, fields, Upper Darby Road, the ledges, and my mansion and estate grounds. I've stumbled upon the best place to view the entire trust lands. I hear a noise and look down. The loggers are walking toward my tree, chain saws in hand. Oh-oh.

I scramble down the tree but don't quite make it to the bottom. I'm in the dense greenery just above them, and I hear them talking.

“Quite the wolf pine,” says Obadiah.

“It's a lot older than anything else around here,” Chahley says.

“There was a field here once, and they must have left this tree, or probably it was four or five trees, for shade for the cows.”

“It would scale good. Some hundreds of dollars in this tree.”

“Nobody's cut it before because there's no way to notch it so it knows where to fall,” Obadiah says, “and you can't tell by eyeballing it. It's a widow maker.”

“I'll cut it,” Chahley says. “You can move the horses to a safe distance and stay with them.”

“My life wouldn't be worth living without you, Chahley.” Obadiah takes Chahley's hand, and the two loggers stare up at the wolf pine, right at me, though they don't see me. They stare for a long time, and then they go off, still holding hands, and the wolf pine and me remain untouched for another day.

18

STRANGER IN THE BIRCH MILL

O
badiah and Chahley are cutting white pine, rock maple, a few red oaks, and one solitary white birch. The whiteness of its butt log makes it easy to pick out, and I keep looking at it and looking at it, wondering what happens to a tree after it is cut by loggers.

I come back a week later with that question still on my mind. The loggers are gone and so are the logs. I follow the horse tracks until I smell the horses. I've arrived at the log yard, where the logs are separated into three piles—pine and hemlock; maple, oak, and yellow birch; and white birch. Somewhere in that stack of white birch is my butt log. The woodcutters, having just finished sandwiches, sit around and smoke and watch a man operate a cherry picker, plucking white birch logs from the pile and placing them on a flatbed truck.

Obadiah smokes Old Gold and Chahley smokes a French cigarette from a holder.

Mister Cherry Picker grabs a birch log and gently places it on the truck.

The horses munch their lunch from grain buckets, at the same time dropping turds and conversing in horse language. I tune in.
Fenwick does most of the talking. Francis just kind of agrees, muttering the horse equivalent of uh-huh, because he knows that Fenwick insists on being agreed with. The ability to eat, drop turds, and at the same time converse, while keeping the whole performance graceful, is a feat I admire.

Mister Cherry Picker grabs another birch log. Another. When he is finished, Mister Cherry Picker gets off his machine and chains the logs on the big truck and drives away. The truck is white with birth (typo, I mean white with birch). Me, I leave my vantage point behind a rock and climb a tree. As the truck moves slowly over the rough logging road, I drop from the tree onto the logs stacked on the truck and lie down flat. From the trust lands, the truck pulls out onto Upper Darby road, picks up speed, and winds down the long hill into the town, air brakes making that tortured sound. From there the truck turns onto the main highway. Now the truck is going sixty. Every once in a while the entire load of logs shifts slightly. I am afraid of rolling off onto the highway, so when I see a space between some logs I crawl down into the notch. The load shifts and I am stuck. I might be crushed at any minute.

I remember my Grandma Elenore's statue of The Blessed Virgin Mary, so I pray to The Blessed Virgin Mary. “Here I am, The Blessed Virgin Mary, stuck and ready to die because of the sin of curiosity and the character flaw of bad judgment. Make it quick, and if I should go to heaven, please introduce me to my mother.” The Blessed Virgin Mary shifts that load, the logs part a bit, and I am able to scramble up out of my death notch. Two minutes later we go around a corner and the space where I had been closes up.

We travel about ten miles, turn off onto a country road, and stop at a big square wood-frame building alongside a river. I climb down the rear of the truck using log chains for handholds and, as the truck slows, drop to the ground, roll four or five times, and pick myself up out of the dust. I smell cut birch wood, can taste it in the mouthful of road grime I'd bit into when I fell. I hear the river argue with rocks; I hear shop machines chug and groan; I hear a screech that scares me because it sounds like me when I was a baby. I have the feeling then that I am time-raveling.

The yard is beautiful in its own way, dominated by stacks of white birch logs high as houses and running for hundreds of feet. Here and there are little mountains of scrap wood and sawdust. The building is old and run down but solid, a fire trap waiting for a match and a turn of fate. I don't see any sign of recent improvements. The year could be 1950.

The double doors to the building are wide open, and it is obvious why when I walk in. The heat. I wait for someone to ask me who I am and what I am doing here. I wonder what I will say. I don't want to lie and I don't want to tell the truth. What to do? No need to worry, because nobody even looks at me. I expect they think I'm somebody's kid, waiting for his mom or dad. At the time, though, I think maybe I have been squashed to death on the truck, and I am invisible, a ghost like you, Mom. Do ghosts go on trips or stay put? Do they meet other ghosts and join clubs, go to war, shop at the Celestial Mall, sing, tinker, watch TV, whittle, attend concerts, hold down jobs? What do ghosts do with all the spare time that eternity provides?

I see right away where the screech comes from. The building might be fashioned-old, but the great big band saw is art of the state. I can't get over the feeling that the screech in that saw is the screech that was me as a baby. I wait for twenty minutes or so when my birch butt log comes down a chute from the outside, is grabbed by a machine arm and placed on a conveyor belt, and runs through the saw—zip, screech, and out. Boards spill onto another conveyor belt. My butt log has just had its butt kicked.

A woman in overalls and an apron stands beside the conveyor belt with a hooked stick. She flips a board over with the hook and tosses it onto another belt going in another direction. I follow the first board. It empties into a bin, where it is picked up by a man wearing red suspenders over a hairy, naked upper body. He feeds the board into a hole. Little birch wood shovel handles spit out another hole.

The machines make the wood pieces you never think about but that show up on toys and tools and gadgets. One machine births salad spoons, another salad forks. They are not like Dad's,
though. They are all the same, and they came pouring out as if by magic. I wonder what Dad would think of all this.

My favorite machine births Scrabble squares.

All of a sudden the machines shut down and it is quiet. The sudden silence stops up my throat and for a moment I cannot breathe. I think everyone is looking at me. Or maybe that is what I hope, because I don't like the persistent feeling of being—like you, Mother—a ghost. But it isn't me that stopped the machines. It is some force, mysterious to me. The shop men and shop women gather into a coven and twist their bodies into unusual positions, as if somebody dumped itching power into their pants. This half-dance, half-exercise goes on for about ten minutes, and then it is back to work. All this time nobody looks at me. I am begging them with my eyes: look at me, look at me. I have a great realization then, a realization that keeps coming back to me, and that, I am sure, will haunt me all the days of my life. Outside the trust lands I'm a stranger.

I hitchhike back to Darby, getting a ride from a frumpy woman in a beat-up Ford Pinto. “A young boy like you shouldn't be thumbing a ride—it's dangerous,” she scolds. I love her, and I want to go home with her and be her son, but I just hang my head, bashful and inarticulate.

Grandma Purse welcomes me as if I'd been gone for twenty years. She suspects something has happened to change me, but she never says a word; she takes me in her arms and hugs me with her clawlike hands.

I tell her what happened, except the part about almost getting killed by the moving load on the truck.

“I'm glad that woman picked you up,” she says.

“How come nobody else would give me a ride?”

“Nobody owes you a ride, Birch,” Grandma says. “In this society, you live on your own initiative, or you die.”

That Sunday I tell Grandpa Howard about my adventure.

“I've done a lot of hitchhiking in my life, and I'll say this: rich people don't pick you up. It's poor folks and perverts that supply hospitality.”

“What's a pervert?”

“A pervert is the reason a young boy should not be hitchhiking,” he says.

“Oh, yes,” I say, as if I know what he is talking about.

I tell him about the stacks of logs at the birch mill, and the fantastic buzz saw, and the lady with the hooked stick.

“She was grading the boards,” Grandpa Howard says.

I tell him about how the machines shut down and the people gathered and made strange movements with their bodies.

Grandpa Howard smiles. “They were taking a tai chi break. It's in the union contract. The machine operators do repetitive work that's dangerous and tedious. Tai chi helps relieve the stress.”

That night I ask Grandma Purse what a pervert is. She tells me what perverts do. I am astounded. It doesn't sound perverted. It sounds interesting, until she gets to the part about being murdered.

Later in my bed, staring at the moonglow on my yellow submarine wall painting, I am thinking about those machines birthing Scrabble squares. They rain down from the sky like the detritus of comets, landing on a big board, the letters making words, clever phrases, and oh-so-elegant sentences. In the dreams I can never understand the words, and no opponent is on the other side of the board for me to challenge. I wonder if any Scrabble player but me thinks about birch trees and their contribution to words.

I pity the poor machine operators, all the fun they miss out on. Make a spoon by hand and you touch the tree, touch the raw wood, hear the wood split as you drop the maul onto the billet, and you touch the wood again, carrying it like something alive, and then you cradle it in your arms as you inspect it, and you work the wood with knives, touching it, always touching it. I find myself thinking about Dad.