Chapter 4
Graham
I told myself after the cabin that I’d keep my distance. Reasonable plan. Simple. That didn’t last long.
“Graham,” Connor calls from the cut line. “Mel’s got questions on the equipment logs. Walk her through it.”
“Sure,” I say, because apparently that’s the only word I know when Connor hands me a grenade.
Mel crosses the clearing with the folder open.
She’s wearing a flannel over a white t-shirt and her hair is pulled back and she looks like she slept fine and ate breakfast and isn’t carrying a single complicated thought about me, which is either true or the best performance I’ve seen since my own at the bar last Friday.
“Your chainsaw records are a disaster,” she says, by way of greeting.
“Good morning to you too.”
“Four saws. Four separate maintenance logs. None of them cross-referenced to the fuel records. It’s like four different people are running four different businesses out of your truck.”
“It’s like four different saws need four different maintenance schedules. Because they do.”
She looks at me. I look at her. We’ve been here before, the cabin kitchen, the same argument, the same wall where her bookkeeping brain hits my equipment brain and neither gives.
Except now we’re standing in a clearing surrounded by the crew and I can hear Koda behind me arguing with a chainsaw that won’t start.
“Come on,” she says. “Show me which saw is which, and I’ll figure out a system that makes sense to both of us.”
I walk her to the equipment trailer. I should not enjoy this.
I should find this tedious, a bookkeeper asking questions about saws, interrupting my actual work.
Instead I’m explaining the difference between the Stihl and the Husqvarna while she takes notes in handwriting that’s neat and fast, and she asks a question about chain tension that’s smarter than anything Koda’s asked in six years, and I nearly say that out loud, which would be a mistake because Koda is fifteen feet away and has the hearing of a man who has spent his life listening for things he can turn into a bit.
“So this one,” she says, tapping the 462, “runs the most hours but has the lowest maintenance cost per hour.”
“It’s the best saw I’ve got.”
“Why isn’t it on the primary cut rotation every day?”
“Because equipment rotation prevents wear concentration. You run your best saw into the ground, you lose it.”
She looks up from her notes. “That’s actually smart.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I’m used to financial systems, not forestry. In finance, you use your best asset as much as possible.”
“In timber, you take care of the things that take care of you.”
Something crosses her face. Quick, there and gone, like she heard more in that sentence than I put there.
I don’t know if I put more there or not.
That’s the problem with Mel. I say things around her that sound like one thing and might be another, and I can’t always tell which until it’s already out.
Behind us, Koda finally wins his argument with the chainsaw. It roars to life and he holds it above his head like a trophy, which is a violation of approximately every safety protocol that exists.
“Koda,” Connor says, from across the clearing. Not loud. Just the tone.
Koda lowers the saw. “I was celebrating.”
“Celebrate with the blade pointed down.”
“You know what your problem is, Connor? You don’t appreciate theater.”
“My problem is my insurance premiums. Blade down.”
Mel is biting her lip. I look away because Mel biting her lip is not something I need to catalog right now, not with Connor twenty yards away.
She finishes her notes. I’ve spent forty minutes with her. It felt like ten. That’s a data point I’m going to ignore.
“Okay,” she says, closing the folder. “I think I can reconcile these if you give me the hour logs for November. You have those?”
“At the cabin.”
“I’ll come get them.”
“I can bring them to the site tomorrow.”
“The cabin’s fine. I know where it is.”
She says it like it’s nothing. Like driving to my cabin is an errand. Like the last time she sat at my kitchen table I didn’t count the inches between us while pretending to read an invoice.
“Saturday work?” she says.
“Saturday works.”
Connor walks over. “You two get it sorted?”
“Your equipment logs are creative,” Mel tells him.
“That’s Graham’s department. He’s the most organized man on this crew.”
“He categorizes chainsaw maintenance by individual saw.”
“Makes sense to me,” Connor says.
Mel looks at me. I look at Mel. Connor looks at both of us with the expression of a man who has absolutely no idea what’s happening and is happy about it.
“Lunch?” Connor says to Mel.
“Starving,” she says, and they walk toward his truck, and I watch them go and then I pick up the Stihl and I get back to work because work is what I do when I need my hands to override my head.
Koda appears beside me. This is what Koda does. He materializes.
“So,” he says.
“No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I was going to say Connor’s sister seems cool. That’s it. That’s the whole observation. Why are you being weird?”
“I’m not being weird.”
“You’re being a little weird. You’ve been cutting the same section for ten minutes. That tree’s already dead, Graham. You won.”
I look at the cut. He’s right. I’ve been trimming a section that’s been done since before Mel arrived. I put down the saw.
“See?” Koda says. “Weird.”
“Go check the chains on the splitter.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Chains. Splitter. Go.”
Koda goes. He’s whistling. I don’t like that he’s whistling.
~~~
Friday. The Burning Tree. The crew’s at the usual table and I’m in my truck in the parking lot, and I’m going to go inside.
That’s the plan. It’s a different plan than last week’s plan, which was leave.
Last week’s plan worked for about six days before it became clear that leaving a bar because a woman sat down is not a sustainable strategy when the woman lives on your mountain and does your books and is coming to your cabin on Saturday for hour logs.
I go inside.
The table is full and loud. Koda is in the middle of a story about a bet he made with Boone involving a log, a truck bed, and a distance Koda swore he could throw it. Based on Boone’s face, the distance was ambitious. Based on Nadia’s face, the log landed somewhere it shouldn’t have.
“It cleared the truck,” Koda insists.
“It cleared the truck and hit my tailgate,” Boone says, with a look that would make most men wither.
“The tailgate is not the truck.”
“The tailgate is literally part of the truck,” Tate says.
“Agree to disagree.”
“That’s not how trucks work,” Mel says from across the table, and the whole table laughs, and she catches my eye when she says it and the corner of her mouth twitches and I know, I know she’s echoing the cabin, the saws, the “that’s not how bookkeeping works” argument, and nobody else catches it but I do, and she knows I do.
I sit down. I order a beer. I do not leave.
Connor is next to me, easy and relaxed, telling Noah about a new contract on the east slope. Mel is across the table between Sam and Poppy. The jukebox is playing something country, and Koda is now arguing with Boone about whether the log throw should be an annual competition.
“We could make it a thing,” Koda says. “The Wylde Mountain Highland Games. Log throw. Axe toss. Chainsaw relay.”
“No,” Connor says, without looking up from his beer.
“You’re not even considering it.”
“I considered it. It took half a second. No.”
“Boone, back me up.”
Boone takes a sip of his beer. “You hit my tailgate.”
“One time.”
“Once was enough.”
Nadia pats Boone’s arm. “I thought it was impressive. Stupid, but impressive.”
“Thank you,” Koda says. “Finally, someone with vision.”
“I said stupid too,” Nadia points out.
Mel is laughing. Not the polite kind, the real kind, the kind Graham-from-last-summer would have noticed from across a bar because it takes over her whole face. I notice it now from eight feet away with a table between us, which is better than across a bar. Or worse. Depends on how you measure.
Sam leans over to Mel. “This is every Friday, by the way. You get used to it.”
“I don’t want to get used to it,” Mel says. “This is the best entertainment I’ve had in years.”
“Better than San Francisco?” Sam asks.
“San Francisco had restaurants. This has Koda trying to start a lumberjack Olympics. It’s not close.”
Koda points at her from across the table. “I like this one. Connor, your sister gets it.”
Connor shakes his head, but he’s smiling, the way Connor smiles when his world is exactly how he wants it. Sister here. Crew here. Everyone accounted for.
Koda leans across the table toward Noah. “Your girlfriend back yet?”
“She’s not my girlfriend. I’ve told you,” Noah says, not looking up from his beer.
“You count the days or just the hours?”
“Leena’s at a conference, Koda. People go to conferences.”
“People do. You don’t text people at conferences fourteen times a day.”
“I don’t text her fourteen times a day.”
“Noah, I’ve seen your phone screen. It’s all weather emojis and her name.”
Noah takes a long sip of his beer and says nothing, which is its own kind of answer, and Koda grins and moves on to his next target because Koda always has a next target.
The evening finds its rhythm. Sam tells a story about a client who sent her fifteen emails in one day about font choices, and Cayden says “I would have stopped reading at three” and Sam says “I stopped reading at two but I responded to all fifteen because I’m a professional” and Mel laughs again and I am watching her laugh the way I watch a good cut fall: cleanly, completely, aware that what I’m looking at is exactly right.
Sam says something to Mel I don’t catch. Mel responds. Sam’s eyebrows go up. Tate leans in. There’s a rapid three-way exchange that happens at a frequency only women seem to operate on, and then Sam stands.
“Bathroom,” she announces. Tate stands. Mel stands. Poppy starts to stand and Nadia grabs her arm and whispers something and Poppy sits back down with a look that says she’s been informed of something.
Three women went to the bathroom.
It takes four minutes. Sam comes back first, sliding into her seat next to Cayden with the expression of a woman who has just conducted a successful interview.
Tate comes back with no expression at all, which on Tate means she has several opinions and is keeping every one of them behind her teeth.
Mel comes back last, and her cheeks are pink, and she doesn’t look at me, and she doesn’t not look at me, and she picks up her drink and takes a long sip and says something to Noah about weather patterns like the last four minutes didn’t happen.
I don’t know what they said to her. I know what I’m looking at: a woman who just had a conversation about me, or about something close to me, and is pretending she didn’t. I know this because I’m a man who’s spent the last two weeks pretending, and I recognize the craft.
The evening goes on. It’s good. That’s the thing I didn’t expect: it’s good.
Not tense, not careful, just good. Koda tells another story, this one about the time he tried to teach his dog to retrieve a felling wedge and the dog brought back a boot instead.
A boot that belonged to a hiker. A hiker who was still wearing the other one.
The table argues about whether the dog was smart or terrible and Koda insists the dog showed initiative, and Tate says “initiative is not the word I’d use” and Koda says “that’s because you lack imagination” and Tate smiles at him with an expression that is equal parts love and the certainty that she married an idiot.
Noah quotes something from a book about old-growth forests that makes Boone nod and makes Koda say “Nerd” with a level of affection that undermines the insult entirely.
Sam and Cayden have a sidebar that ends with Cayden shaking his head and Sam looking triumphant.
Connor talks to Blake about a contract deadline and they solve it in four sentences the way men who’ve worked together for years solve things: fast, direct, no ego.
The couples are easy with each other, arms on chairs, shared drinks, the comfortable choreography of people who’ve figured their thing out.
I’m not one of them. I’m the man at the table who goes home alone, and that’s been fine for three years, and it’s fine now, and I’m lying to myself with the fluency of long practice.
Mel tells the table about a client at her old firm who tried to expense a jet ski as a “water-based transportation asset.” Koda nearly falls off his chair.
Connor shakes his head. I don’t laugh, because I don’t, but my mouth does something and Mel sees it from across the table and for one second her whole face changes, and I file that away in the place where I keep everything about her, which is getting crowded.
Last call. The crew starts to thin. Boone and Nadia leave first. Blake and Poppy. The table shrinks.
I’m still here.
Koda slaps my shoulder on his way out. “See? Not weird tonight. Much better. You were almost fun.”
“Thanks, Koda.”
“I’m serious. You should try this more often. Being a person. It suits you.”
He leaves. Tate follows, shaking her head. Connor stands, stretches, looks at Mel.
“Ready?”
“Right behind you,” she says.
She pulls on her jacket. She passes my end of the table. She doesn’t stop, but as she walks by she says, quiet enough that only I hear it: “You stayed.”
Two words. Not a question. Just an observation, from a woman who notices things the same way I do, and the observation lands in my chest like a stone in still water.
“Goodnight, Graham,” she says, normal volume, to the table.
“Night,” I say.
She walks out with Connor. I finish my beer. I put cash under my glass. Same as last week. Everything the same as last week except the part where I’m still sitting here and she’s the one leaving, and the reversal of it tells me something I already knew.
The parking lot is quiet. I start the truck.
The air through the window is different tonight.
Cooler. A shift in the wind, the warm front losing its hold, the mountain remembering what month it is.
I can feel it the way I feel everything: precisely, completely, and with the full awareness that noticing a change is not the same as being ready for it.