Trail Creek

The day starts with my wife’s tears. Since our son was stillborn last fall, many of my days start this way. All I seem to be able to say is that we can try again. It may be early spring out in the world, but sometimes it seems like winter lives in our house.

The old red Ford starts right up after a push-start down the driveway. I bail into the driver’s seat and give it some gas. There’s a forty-five-minute drive out to Trail Creek, where I’m clearing right-of-way for Pacific Power. Curt is bringing in a portable saw mill this morning to process the trees I’ve taken down and I need to get the loader running before he arrives.

I drive with the windows down; the cold morning air sweeps the sleep and sadness from my brain. A spring shower in the middle of the night left the air clean and smelling of wet asphalt; the highway is black and shiny in the early light. Just before the turn-off, I stop at The Happy Taco for coffee and a burrito to eat cold for lunch. The waitress at the drive-through knows my old truck.

“The usual, Mr. Zee,” she says with a smile and a twinkle in her eye, she hands me a crisp paper bag and a carton of hot coffee in trade for a few crumpled dollar bills - just like every morning when Dennie is too sad to fix my lunch bucket.

“You know what I like, Carla.” I can still twinkle a bit myself, if I do say so, and tell her to keep the change.

The smell of the burrito almost gets the better of me, but I gulp the coffee in quick hot mouthfuls. In a mile or so, I’ll need both hands to steer the Ford. The unpaved road up through the timber is steep and rough cut, mostly mud and boulders. Last night’s rain left the surface soft and slippery. The truck bounces from rut to rut, slewing sideways, tires spinning for traction. It takes a fine combination of spinning the steering wheel and teasing the gas pedal to keep the pickup moving up hill when she really just wants is to slide into a rut and rest in the mud. My hat meets the headliner more than once; the paper bag with the burrito ends up on the floor. My contract states when I finish this job I have to leave the road impassable. It won’t take much.

The sun is just clearing the tops of the trees when I get to the clearing. The old yellow Case loader squats like a huge prehistoric bug, its long outriggers flexed like legs, loading tongs dangle like huge pincers against the sky. I park the Ford pointed downhill for a rolling start and slam the truck door twice before the latch catches. The new fittings and hoses for the loader are in the back, they make an arm load but I get it all in one trip.

The sun feels good on my neck. I hate to crawl under the loader, but the slick new mud makes it easy. On my back on the cold ground, I reach up to remove the old worn-out hoses and install the new. It takes a few tries. I pause now and then to rest my arms across my chest and ease the ache in my shoulders. It’s dry but claustrophobic under the machine. The scarred and dented belly pan hulks mere inches from my face, the smell of old crank case oil is rank and heavy. It’s dark and cold down here, and hard to get a breath.

There was a time when I thought I owned all the light in the world. When Dennie told me we were going to have a baby, it was the best possible news. The loss of that child has dimmed the light and thinned the air to where sometimes I can’t fill my lungs.

Frogs. there must be hundreds of them, sing from the marshy spot across the clearing. Maybe it was last night’s rain, maybe today’s sunshine. Whatever the reason, they are making a happy racket. When I crawl out from under the loader to get some air, they shut down like someone flipped a switch.

One more slide under the machine and everything is back together with no extra parts and I pour new hydraulic fluid into the Case. The gasoline pony-motor cranks a few times, chokes, and finally turns over. I wait for the diesel indicator to warm up, then kick the diesel engine over and adjust the idle, till it makes the right kind of noise. Then test the outriggers – they respond clumsily, one at a time. I crawl off the machine to check the fittings. An adjustment to a hose clamp stops a pressure leak. I wait a minute or two. Everything seems tight, so I climb back on. The controls respond to my touch, the crane swivels and extends, the pinchers clench and loosen. Another check for leaks, and we’re good to go.

Logs are piled off to one side of the clearing to leave space for the portable mill. Curt should be here soon, so I sit on the end of one log, eat my burrito, inhale the sharp pitch smell of cut timber and listen to the frogs. Then again, like a switch the frogs, all at once, stop singing. I can hear the growl of Curt’s truck and the screeching groaning protest of the mill being towed over the miserable surface of the road. I walk over to meet him.

“Hey, Curt,” I say. “What do you call a frog that can recite the Gettysburg Address?”

“Hell if I know,” he says. “What?”

“A talking frog.”

“Well,” he says, releasing a chain binder, “if you’ve got one, we can cash in and give up this crazy romantic way of life.”

I clap the shoulder of his old jacket, raising a cloud of dust and the smell of diesel fuel. “Hell, Curt, it’s spring. Anything can happen.”