8. Holland
Chapter eight
Holland
The interview had produced three good quotes, along with one claim I would need to verify through another source.
About par for a forty-five-minute drive up a dirt road to a house with a dog on the porch, where a man had opened the door already half convinced he should not have agreed to speak with me.
He was formerly with Mallick his account supplied texture, not the keystone.
They cut corners on the small stuff so you'd assume they didn't on the big stuff.
The quote earned an underline. Half the transcription remained unfinished in the notebook on the passenger seat. I drove the Forest Service road with the heater pushing warm air against my knuckles on the wheel.
The project area opened on my left, the cleared slope visible through the passenger window. My foot eased off the gas before I had made any decision.
While planning the day, I had reminded myself that the staging clearing occupied the only road from the trailhead to the highway. Passing the clearing was geography, not choice. Both claims were true. The usefulness of both claims made me suspicious.
I heard the saw before I saw Cal.
The engine note came through the lowered window, deeper than I expected.
Not the hardware-store whine rented to weekend men.
This saw sounded worked, controlled by somebody whose hands no longer needed instruction.
Before I questioned the impulse, I steered onto the gravel apron at the clearing's edge.
A sandy-haired man in yellows lifted two fingers from his saw. Wes combined a greeting with a parking direction in one motion.
"Right there," he called, pointing toward the shoulder.
I raised a hand in thanks, then put the Subaru where he wanted.
Then I made the choice I have considered every day since. I climbed out, stood at the clearing's edge in the wrong boots, then watched.
Cal worked a hundred thirty feet away through the thinned stand, wearing the full kit I had previously seen only in pieces. Yellow shirt, white hard hat, chaps. The big saw idled at his hip.
A week earlier, I had watched him work the larch with a Forest Service escort at my elbow, a notebook in my hand. The interview had supported my attention like a trellis. Now the cold light sloped through the clearing while Cal read a tree. My notebook remained shut in the car.
He circled the trunk slowly, head tipped as he studied signs I could not see.
I catalogued what I could. The trunk's lean. The crown's heaviest side. My list came to almost nothing. Heat climbed my face despite the cold.
Cal stopped beneath the canopy, searching for dead limbs that could fall on sawyers. Widowmakers, the escort had called them. The word conveyed the danger.
I followed Cal's gaze. Branches crossed the sky, gray against gray. My neck began to ache while the canopy told me nothing.
Cal became motionless, though not from rest. His eyes moved through the canopy, tracing a line I could not follow. He seemed to run the entire sequence forward before touching the saw.
My chest tightened with his stillness. I was holding my breath for a decision I could not see him make.
He fired the saw. The engine settled into that worked pitch, low, sure enough to tighten the muscles behind my ribs.
I reached into my coat pocket for a pen already left in the car, then forced my hand back to my side.
Cal cut the face notch with two clean passes, then knocked the wedge free with one gloved hand.
I did not breathe again until he moved behind the trunk.
The back cut began. Cal wasted no motion. I had noticed the same economy across a diner table, his hands contained around a coffee mug. Here that restraint governed ninety feet of standing timber while controlling a machine capable of taking his leg off at the hip.
The notebook remained in the car, insistent as a phone ringing in another room. My hands hung cold, empty at my sides, fingers curling against nothing. The habit that had organised my adult life—writing down whatever I saw—fell silent. I simply watched. That silence frightened me more than the saw.
Cal stepped back, bringing the saw clear. The engine idled.
For one suspended second, the tree stood as the tree had stood for a hundred years, not yet persuaded to assume another form.
The hinge fibres broke with a crack against my sternum.
The tree leaned, committed, then fell through the gap Cal had chosen. The impact travelled through the cold ground, entered the soles of my unsuitable boots, then reached my knees.
"Tree down." Cal's voice carried across the stand, calm, unstrained.
The impact passed through me, but my body stayed where I had planted my feet. I did not flinch.
Fear followed, delayed, unfamiliar. Around me the clearing settled. Sawdust hung in the cold air. The noise no longer felt directed at me. I had become an observer at the clearing's edge. Cal had made the landscape legible without my consent. I could not return to ignorance.
I opened the notebook on the gravel, pen cold between my fingers. Instead of writing about Cal, I added two lines about the field-support man’s loading-dock perspective. The notes had no connection to what I had witnessed. I closed the book. I was reaching for a railing.
Across the clearing, Cal left the work face to approach his staged pack. He pulled off one glove, took a phone from his chest pocket, then read the screen.
I watched his face. His attention sharpened, though his body remained still.
After typing a short response with both thumbs, he looked northwest toward the sky above the peaks.
I followed his gaze. The sky had hardened to gray since I left the trailhead road. Gold drained from the afternoon too early. The air carried a mineral smell, sharp enough to promise a change I could not name.
Cal could read the weather. I could only smell the warning.
Envy came first. Attraction followed, less respectable, warm, unwelcome against the back of my neck.
This gap was not the one I already knew about—not the four months, the records, or the name in the folder.
Cal possessed knowledge I lacked. Beside him, I felt like a visitor.
I did not dislike the feeling, which created the problem.
Cal noticed me. He left the saw beside his pack, stripped off the second glove, then crossed the clearing. He stopped far enough away to remain polite.
"Vane."
"Hi." I pulled my hands from my pockets, then regretted the self-conscious movement. "I'm outside your work area. Wes directed me off the road. I had an interview up the drainage. I'm headed out."
"How's the road up top?"
"Rough but passable."
"Who did you interview?"
Cold traced the backs of my arms. Cal had used the same even tone for the interview question as for the road conditions. That careful consistency told me the question mattered.
"A former employee," I said.
He waited. Cal could leave silence open longer than most people could bear.
"Field support," I added. "Not forecasting."
"What's his name?"
"I don't burn people who talk to me."
"That's fair." Cal turned his attention toward the stand rather than pressing me. His acceptance told me enough.
Only after he withdrew the question did I hear my own answer as he must have heard my response. Too complete. Too constructed. Every word had raised another board in the fence. I looked down at my boots on the gravel, the wrong boots for this clearing or any clearing Cal worked.
"How far along are you out here?" I asked.
"We'll clear the south face by Friday if the weather holds." He glanced toward the timber. "The weather won't hold."
"You're sure?"
"The sky's changing." A trace of dry amusement touched his mouth, then disappeared.
He had returned my ignorant reading of the afternoon without mocking me. The courtesy struck harder than mockery would have.
"The front's moving faster than forecast," he said. "You'll want to reach the highway before dark."
The warning was specific. Numbers supported his reading of the sky, yet he offered the conclusion without making me pay for an explanation. My throat tightened with gratitude I had not expected.
"We've got an hour of usable light," he said. "I'm not wasting another minute."
Cal turned toward the work face.
I never said Thursday. As I walked back to the car, his refusal to waste the hour stung. Beneath the embarrassment waited a worse admission. I wanted to become worth his time.
I drove out.
A mile down, after the clearing disappeared from the mirror, I pulled onto the shoulder. The heater ran while the notebook rested open on my knee, still showing the unfinished page.
I had logistical information to share. Sending the information would be reasonable. I took out my phone.
Heading to the Stillwater cabin Thursday afternoon. Interview nearby. Staying overnight if the road holds.
Too much.
I deleted the overnight detail, then restored the words. The detail was relevant.
Will my Thursday trip interfere with the crew's staging? Happy to work around you.
The final phrase was a costume, so I removed the disguise.
Will my trip cause a problem for the crew?
Three drafts waited on the screen. I sent the message that sounded most like logistics. The honest message remained unwritten. I had lived for a long time in the distance between those two versions.
I placed the phone in the cupholder before returning to the road.
The phone buzzed before the next bend.
On the straightaway, I lifted the screen. Cal had sent four words.
No problem. Drive safe.
I read the message twice, then placed the phone face down on the passenger seat rather than examine my reaction.
Cal wasted neither motion nor language. Drive safe could have been ordinary courtesy.
The same words could have carried concern.
Four words on a screen offered no voice, no expression, no pause to help me choose between those readings.
Outside the windshield, the last gold was leaving the ridgeline.
Texting protected both of us from having to choose.
I returned the phone to the cupholder, then drove out of the wilderness with both hands on the wheel, the road dropping steadily beneath the treeline.
Behind me, gray cloud descended from the peaks, pouring into the drainage slowly at first, then rapidly.
Somewhere in the stand, Cal was reading the storm while moving his crew out before daylight failed.
The page on my knee remained unfinished throughout the descent.
Thursday waited two days ahead. The Stillwater cabin now existed inside a message Cal had read.
I drove toward the highway with the storm building behind me while silence filled the car. For once, I did not interrupt.