But I’m A Logger

Jimmy’s jaw dropped. His mouth, if not the rest of him, was clearly awestruck. “But… but… she didn’t tell me been talkin’ to anybody else.”

Harlan barked a laugh. “What, ‘fraid she been a-cheatin’?” Jimmy looked embarrassed, but she continued, “Say, you one a-them Harris boys, ain’t you?”

He nodded, deciding being mute was the best way to deal with this strange woman–this newcomer, his mind firmly insisted on calling her.

“I knew your brother back when. Now there was a sumbitch. Don’t expect to be seein’ him for a damn long while.”

Jimmy grunted, probably in agreement, but Harlan’s focus had already moved on. The skin around her eyes crinkled like a child’s paper fortune teller, smashed flat between grubby hands, as she asked Oscar, “Why was a-screamin’ like that anyhow? Sounded like somebody done died.”

“She was, well, I was cryin’ and she was tryin’ to make me feel better,” Oscar stammered, pulling Chinook tight to zir chest.

“Somebody did die,” Jimmy stated flatly. “Osc’s too nice to say, but zie was cryin’–you see where there’s supposed to be mountains but there ain’t?”

She didn’t follow his pointing finger, only nodded with downcast eyes.

“And you see over yonder, where there’s still a mountain, but there ain’t no trees?”

She squeezed her eyes tight and nodded again, just once.

“Next week, there won’t be a mountain there, neither. And I helped–I cut down them trees!” His voice cracked, but he continued in a whisper, “I’m a logger. Everyone in my family always been a logger. It’s my job.”

Oscar murmured something in Chinook’s ear, something that was caught and carried by the wind.

Harlan’s eyes flashed in recognition. “I know, child, but the evil’s still been done.”

Jimmy sat heavily next to his friend–on the other side from Harlan–and heaved a giant breath. “What did you say?”

“I said, it’s not your fault. You didn’t know… you never thought about it. And I told ‘Nook not to be mad.”

Chinook, perhaps to prove she had understood Oscar, trotted the few feet over to Jimmy and licked his face. “Oh, ‘Nook, you couldn’t be mad at me, huh? I didn’t mean to… you know I’d never…” The group lapsed into a stillness equally uncomfortable to all four as Jimmy buried his nose in Chinook’s shoulder and Oscar, once again, began to sniffle. “I am… I am gonna go back down home. Get some food. Feed ‘Nook.” He stood and looked around uncertainly, looking almost hopeful that someone would stop him.

“I’ll be there, later,” Oscar murmured, dark eyes fixed inscrutably on Jimmy’s uneasy face.

Enter Harlan

Jimmy looked on helplessly as Oscar’s face stretched and buckled under the force of so much hurt, as the very last of the sun died behind the clouds, as Chinook ran towards them from down ridge, barking urgently. She curled up around Oscar’s crouched feet and bayed.

Zombie-like, Oscar buried zir hands in Chinook’s ruff and twined zir fingers through the thick fur, scrabbling at it hysterically with trembling fingertips. She licked the tears crinkling zir face and nuzzled zir wet cheeks, her hot, comforting breath gusting into zir ears and nose. Eventually, Oscar’s breath calmed and zir tears fell more quietly, until zie only rocked slowly back and forth, hiccuping softly.

“Hey… hey,” Jimmy whispered, tracing the line of his friend’s spine with nervous fingertips. “What can I-is there anything I-I want to help but I ain’t-what I mean is-I, I-what should I do?”

“You done brought ‘Nook up here and I think that’s about all there is right now.”

“But I didn’t-” Jimmy splurted out in confusion, before new (and distinctly human) footsteps cut him off, quiet though they were.

Jimmy focused his hunter’s eyes on the nearly inaudible sounds crackling through the redbuds. A slight figure emerged fluidly from the shadows under the treeline, brushing back scrubby undergrowth with long, knobbled fingers. Her bare feet made very little noise as they shuffled through generations thick layers of spicy-smelling dead leaves and pine needles. Fresh acorn eyes shone unerringly from underneath the tattered brim of a gray forager’s cap. An old pokestock strapped to her pack glinted not at all in the dusky blue light.

“Oh, the little one’s jes’ fine. Heard her a-bayin’ and carryin’ on like that; thought she done got herself caught in a trap or sommit.” Above the tree line, the mountain breeze started taking back some of the leaves caught in her rusted gray hair, contained loosely in a braid to her waist.

“There ain’t no traps up here,” Jimmy contradicted.

“There most surely are. I’m all the time stickin’ ‘em or puttin’ ‘em to rust in a stream or some such.”

“I ain’t settin’ ‘em, that’s for dang sure. Trappin’s for cheaters and no goods.” His eyes narrowed in an unusual display of suspicion. “Who are you? And how you know my dog?”

“Chinook? She comes up here all the time. I know all the animals from down yonder there,” she trailed off, indicating from far-off route 119, up the mountain and over the ridge. “All the way over to Virginia.”

Jimmy’s mouth hardened to a paper thin line, but Oscar’s wavering voice interrupted before any more questions, bubbling steadily in Jimmy’s brain, had the chance to overflow. “But who are you? I lived here eighteen years and never seen you yet.”

The small woman’s face softened considerably as she looked towards Oscar, still tear-streaked and huddled around Chinook’s tightly coiled body, though didn’t (entirely) let down her defensive stance. “I don’t get down into town too much. And, well… I guess you can call me Harlan. Seems the simplest.” Her voice, previously like work boots hiking through piles of leaves, lowered to the level of moccasins on moss.

Oscar nodded once to voice zir agreement, and resumed staring off at the flattened mountains in the night-shrouded distance.

Harlan folded her legs beneath her, settling in next to Oscar and Chinook as quietly as snow falling off a fir tree. Her fingers-tanned bone-deep-fluttered to her gray-swathed knees. Oscar examined her closely, shyly, from the corners of zir eyes. Her clothes were so battered they were no color at all. Or rather, the color hovered somewhere between brown and gray, like last year’s abandoned firewood turning slowly to dirt. Oscar didn’t doubt she’d blend in well with the side of a mountain, or a compost heap, especially with all them grass stains. Over a long sleeved tunic so plain zie couldn’t see the seams, she wore a long leather vest, spotted by water and time, that fastened just above a bulging green pouch at her hip.

The first stars twinkled in a purpling sky before Jimmy, who had resumed his usual taciturnity, broke the now-comfortable silence. “You knew her name.” He didn’t bother with the question mark; his voice demanded an answer regardless.

Harlan looked at him, slightly surprised, but stated simply, “She told me, jes’ same’s she told you.”

In struggle,

Bargain Puppy

Oscar and Jimmy

Oscar and Jimmy hiked the last steep yards to the ridge in panting silence. The moon hung low back the way they came, throwing thin light over the dark side of the mountain. Past the tree line, they saw the sun settling into its rainbowing nest of clouds.

“This,” Jimmy huffed, “the spot I been tellin’ you about.”

“Chinook got the right idea, she ain’t runnin’ her mouth, kid. Shush.” Oscar kept zir trembling voice just barely audible, then shut up fast and tried to silence zir breathing, too. Zie watched in awe as the sun cast the last of the days’ rays onto the blue-green mountains zie had known all zir life. Air just barely gasped in and out of zir chest as zie gazed at the familiar silhouettes, shapes more a part of zir than zir own hands.

Jimmy’s eyes followed his friend’s movements closely despite the distracting brilliance of the sunset, hoping to find just what was so fascinating about those same backdrop mountains. So when the crowds of crows burst over the tree line behind them, cawing bedtime as they flapped from daytime trash piles to nighttime roosts, he saw Oscar’s wondering eyes and heard zir joyous gasp rather than the snap of spread fingers brushing the last red sunbeams. And when the crows flew right over their heads in a line so straight it was like the demons of hell were after them, he didn’t notice where they were flying to, just the breezes their wings made in Oscar’s hair.

“Do you see that?” Oscar breathed in one pained whisper.

Jimmy snapped back to the landscape, tracking the birds. “The crows?”

“Their roosts. Their roosts…”

“They ain’t roosting anywhere atall. They just flying around.”

“Their roosts are gone! The whole mountaintop,” Oscar’s shriek lost steam halfway through, as zie focused Jimmy’s attention at the end of zir wobbling, pointing fingertip. “The whole mountaintop is just… fuckin’… just fuckin’ gone,” zie finished in a hollow voice so low Jimmy could barely discern consonants from vowels.

At the western edge of their vision, the crows milled like gnats over the newly-flattened ground. The dying light spilled in long, purple shadows across the emptily gray dirt that looked more like a badly focused picture of the moon than anything else.

“They was doin’ the dynamiting last week,” Jimmy offered hesitantly. “Must’ve just finished flattenin’ it out.”

“How do you know?” Oscar demanded.

“Well, when they clear all the trees off…” his voiced trailed off, unsure what the response would be. “Well, when they clear them trees, iff’n it’s Bob’s Lumber what got hired to do it, it’s me helps cut ‘em down.”

Zie sat dumbly. “I always known you killed trees. But I—I didn’t know this.”

“If you look over yonder, just right next to them crows. Can you see the part that ain’t flat but ain’t got no trees neither?”

Oscar nodded, hands piled limply in zir lap and eyes unfocused.

“That’s next week.”

Zie looked from the yellow swath of mountain to Jimmy’s green eyes to the yellow swath to Jimmy’s strong hands to the place where there should be tress to zir best friend in the whole world to the land that had always been a part of zir. And crumpled. Zir face melted faster than wet TP, shoulders folding in tight and ribcage racking with deep, painful-sounding sobs that ripped right out, right from zir very bones.

Jimmy looked on helplessly as Oscar’s face stretched and buckled under the force of so much hurt, as the very last of the sun died behind the clouds, as Chinook ran towards them from down ridge, barking urgently. She curled up around Oscar’s crouched feet and bayed.

In struggle,

Bargain Puppy

Jimmy Harris

Jimmy Harris rolled a half-grown mongrel off his chest and groaned himself out of bed, stumbling in his hurry to silence the shrilling, blinking alarm clock. The smack needed for the job knocked it the last half-inch or so from its always precarious perch atop the pile of broken down cardboard boxes and milk crates, “Property of Piggly Wiggly, Inc,” which made up the bulk of Jimmy’s furniture. The unwieldy clock landed slap on his toes and his cry—more of sleepy surprise than pain—jerked Chinook from her doze with a yelp and sent Jimmy storming to his closet of a bathroom.

“At least it turned off this time,” he muttered as he splashed frigid water on his face, dribbling most of it down the front of yesterday’s T-shirt. “Probably time for a new one of those, too,” he added, heading back towards the bed which sat in the middle of one of his two all-purpose rooms. He pulled off the top T-shirt and pair of pants, gave each a stiff shake and half-hearted sniff, and quickly threw them on. Running his hands through his red-orange rumple, he looked around distractedly for the flannel hanging (as always) on the nail by the tiny house’s only door. Shit stompin’ boots and a dark hat were snatched up with the murmur, “I’m a-dressin’ for success… where the hell are my socks?” before he continued dressing without the offending articles.

Hopping out the door to cement his boots in place, Jimmy narrowly avoided a scrape with two separate piles of socks, both working their way outside. With a sigh that sounded almost like defeat, Jimmy plunked down on the cinder block stairs to yank off his boots, roll up a mismatched pair f thick wool sicks, swear heartily under his breath, untie the boots and refasten them with triple knots around his ankles. Chinook sidled up to him, nuzzled his sandpapery chin with a wet nose, and whined softly.

“Oh, girl, here I am ’bout to leave and damn near almost forgot.” Two steps inside, he filled a tin bucket with silty well water, dropped two scoops dry food in a chipped bowl of uncertain origin. Scritching the dog’s happily slurping head, he whispered in her soft ear, “I’ll see your beautiful face again just as soon as I can, I swan,” and slipped out the door in silence.

He pulled a cigarette from his flannel pocket, lighting it with a speed born of too much practice. Chittering against the spring chill, he puffed clouds into the still-dark morning, Jimmy hopped aboard his rusting blue-green pickup. “Hey, I gotta get me to work and I got someone to see, you start right up and no fuckin’ around, hear?” The engine coughed and turned over after three tries and rumbled down the gravel-spackled dirt driveway and followed the mountain road the five miles to town, lurching around sharp, unmarked corners dangerously and making the bed of tools bounce and rattle all the way.

The engine screeched as he jerked the steering wheel and parked in the Cawood Piggly Wiggly’s parking lot. He closed his door quietly to avoid the rage of late-sleeping townies, and but could not hush the clunk of steel toes against asphalt as he tossed the butt to the doorway trashcan. The door rang out, as if annoyed, to announce his entrance.

“You a sight for sore eyes, Jimmy. Must be damn near quittin’ time,” sang out the figure lounging against the counter. Zir dark hair sparkled red under the fluorescent lights as zie hurried back behind it to pour a large coffee.

“Maybe for you, Osc.” He took the coffee gratefully from his friend’s dainty brown hands. “How’s the work goin’? Oh, And one-a them Huskies, looks like it’s fixing to rain today.”

“It’s keepin’ a roof over my head and skin on my bones, which is about all I can ask outta a job in a uptight, run down town like this. Small coffee and a poucha Top, $3.27,” zie continued, sliding the Husky across the narrow counter.

“Well, I see you finally gotta uniform fittin’ your position.”

“Don’t judge, don’t judge. Maybe they’ve realized how necessary it is to have a doormat to shit all over. Besides,” Oscar added wryly, “I think the darts in the top really accentuate my figure.” Zie demonstrated by pulling the stiff plastic tight to zir chest and striking a pose. A chuckling smile creased zir face and sharpened zir cheekbones. “You keep blushing like that, boy, I’m gonna start following you home ’stead of just seein’ you off to work.”

“Don’t you wish. Where’d they drag that POS up from anyways? Looks like a box-a trash bags got a hairball.”

Oscar snorted, took Jimmy’s money, and answered, “Miz Blondie wants us to look more “professional.” But they can only afford one-a these, so this is it. Looks about as good on her and her bigged-up daughter, too.”

“Maybe it’ll get you some-a them tips you always talkin’ about,” he laughed before stepping to the small table laden with dairy-free creamer and sugar to stir a hearty dose of each into his boiling coffee.

“Damned right it will. You see this?” Oscar asked, shaking an empty jar menacingly at Jimmy. “Just as soon as we get any customers, this thing’ll be fit to burst with the tips rolling in.”

“I think that’s the Take-A-Penny, Leave-A-Penny jar, kid,” he said as he took his change.

“Well, shit. No wonder people keep takin’ my tips. I hain’t made a fuss, ’cause there weren’t nothin’ in there, but I noticed. I noticed.”

Jimmy laughed for his friend’s sake, then paused as a somber look came over his freckled face. “I’m serious, though, Osc. How’s that boss been treatin’ you?”

“Same as ever. Thinks I’m out to take her man. Won’t make me manager, ’cause I’d get a raise, but sure makes me do the job. Swears under her breath all the time that when the Judgement comes, I’ll get what’s comin’ to me.”

“And her too.”

“Speak of the devil,” Osc murmured, cocking his head to indicate the parking lot and snatching up the five Jimmy had snuck into the “tip” jar when he thought Oscar wasn’t looking. Both dropped into silence as the short, belligerent woman charged through the doors.

“Hey you! Boy, stop standin’ around and close that there register. I swan, you slower’n Christmas.”

“Yes’m, Miz Blondie,” Oscar answered in hushed tones, already half-way done counting the money. “All set, ma’am. See you tonight.” The words poured from zir mouth as zie clocked out, one foot already out the door.

Jimmy followed, breaking into gales of laughter as soon as they were out of sight of the Piggly Wiggly’s windows. “That woman,” he choked out, “has got to be one of the most ridiculous things in ten miles.”

“Guess so. But I’d rather not think on it. Gotta smoke? Or a ride home?”

“When do I not have either of those? Especially for you, oh sunshine of my mornin’ time.” He took out his pack, removed two carefully and lit them both with an irreverent smile.

“Oh, you’re cute. Real cute,” Oscar laughed, shoving zir friend slap into the driver’s seat with surprising force for someone with such thin muscles. “Speakin’ of, how’s Nook been doin’ without me?”

“Still thinks she should be comin’ to work with me, never you mind the crashin’ logs. Probably be doin’ better iff’n you came to see her some time or ‘nother, “ he shouted of the rumble of a cranky engine. “Get your ass in here ‘fore you make me late.”

“Well fine. Asshole.”

They made the ride in silence, preferring to crane their necks to count each new sunbeam that broke through the trees overhead and played across the pair like hands on a piano. The road went quick, in its twisting way, and soon enough Oscar was disembarking in front of the small house zie shared half of with zir aunt.

Ze walked slowly across the dirt lawn to the cracked sidewalk that led around the house, to the back door, placing one foot after another with great determination. Jimmy stopped zir just before the corner, yelling out, “Hey! Wait! You want me to pick you up on the way home? Come see Chinook before you go to work, eat a whole mess’a food?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but swung down and crossed the lawn in four fast steps.

“If you bring her into it, how can I say no?” Under the tired wrinkles, a shit-eating grin crossed zir face.

“I’ll be here just as soon as that whistle blows. And Oscar… you take good care of yourself today, hear?”

Oscar looked into his eyes, brown searching green, and shrugged zir agreement. Ze turned and walked inside, as if unwilling to say goodbye, footsteps trickling across the yard like molasses.

Jimmy stood there for a long moment, watching the sun rise cool and clear in a nest of clouds behind the low roof. Morning light illuminated the warped tin roof, busted up front door and ramshackle tool shed. Scabby weeds and flattened beer cans dotted the yard, but in the trees dwarfing the house, birds greeted one another and squirrels chattered wildly along the branches. Jimmy stood there for a long while, just listening, before turning on his heel. With a whoosh of breath, he drove away, up the mountain.

In struggle,

Bargain Puppy