Chapter 41
Evan hears the front door click behind her as she leaves.
He grabs a towel off the rack and ties it around his waist. In the bedroom, the comforter is thrown open on Annie’s side of
the bed, which is otherwise untouched. She must have actually slept while he was away. But the heating blanket isn’t plugged
in as it always is. It’s still folded neatly on the dresser.
She left so quickly. Evan needs her badly right now, he needs her to bring him back to himself. But at the same time, they
haven’t talked in days, and he’s been lying to her, or at least omitting the truth. His chest is heavy with it.
Evan wasn’t up north for another rescue.
He paid Ed Hollingsworth a visit at the logging camp. Ed offered him a float plane, but Evan declined and took the ferry up.
He wanted to make the journey on his own terms, wanted the long hours on the open water to clear his head.
It ended up doing the opposite.
Time has not eased things as much as he hoped. Evan could not travel the channel without an internal deluge. Every time he
blinked, he relived an undiluted version of what happened: inhaling briny water, dead trees bashing into each other and swirling
in their wake. The ever-recurring image of Walker’s face-down body, mayday calls, pumping until his arms screamed.
The accordion of time folded out and back. Opening his eyes, he clutched the ferry railing, its peeling white paint and rust. His palms were clammy. He felt like passing out.
There was no way he could say yes to all this again.
He wouldn’t sign Gibbons’s papers. They’d have to figure out Hale Timber without him. Evan was ready to wash his hands of
it all forever.
The ferry finally arrived in Hale’s at 1:30 a.m. Disembarking, he walked up Main Street toward the logging road. He was glad
to arrive at night, to avoid seeing anyone or anything up close. He had to stay single-minded.
Some things, however, he was forced to see again. Fishing boats moored slip-by-slip next to Rosie’s fish shop, which had been
resurrected. Likewise, the Lucky convenience store, where he used to buy freezies that stuck to his fingers. The barbershop
next door advertised zero fades. Houses and offices—-more numerous than he remembered.
He was surprised by how much had been rebuilt.
As Ed promised, a truck was idling at the edge of town. Evan opened the passenger door and met Jamie Kavanagh, a Hale Timber
truck driver. He smelled of Listerine mouthwash. Evan closed the door behind him and Jamie did a three-point turn. They started
up the mountain over the rutted dirt.
“It’s a bumpy ride. Sorry, Mr. Hale,” Jamie said.
Evan fiddled with the knobs on the dash and fired up the heater. “Call me Evan, please.”
They drove straight for hours, further into the forest than Evan had ever been. The camp was now deeper in the interior. Probably
chasing older growth, bigger trees, more money. Evan lowered the window and smelled forest. He closed his eyes for a minute,
but a pothole jostled him awake. They arrived at camp with the morning sun.
Ed looked similar but was now completely bald.
He’d never been one for small talk. He was wearing a Hale Timber vest over a checkered shirt, the sleeves rolled tightly over his crossed forearms. They headed to the canteen and made coffees in white ceramic mugs.
There had to be two dozen people in there.
Who were these men? Where were their families? Were they all from Hale’s?
“Is that you, Ev?” A familiar voice from the kitchen.
He turned to see the head line cook, Tracey Ramos. She was in her late thirties when Evan last saw her nearly seven years
ago; new lines had appeared around her smiling eyes. An earring stud of a carved mountain range still stretched her right
earlobe. An intricate barn owl tattoo climbed up the left side of her neck.
“Trace. It’s good to see you,” he said, embracing her.
“The prodigal son returns!” It was Michael Enslow behind him, one of Hale’s oldest loggers. When Evan was young, Michael’s
hair was blond and shaggy, but now it was white and grey. His posture had stooped. “I’m so sorry about your dad, bud. We’ve
missed you up here.” He squeezed Evan’s shoulder with his large hand.
“Payroll’s been delayed,” Ed said, as he pulled Evan away toward the office trailer and held the door open. “Everyone’s grinding
my gears.”
“You didn’t call me.”
“How was I supposed to do that? No number until Gibbons dredged you up.”
“You could have called the lower mainland coast guard. You knew I was there.”
“Well . . . We’re here now. Buckle up, Evan.”
“I only found out about this three days ago, Ed.”
“We’ll get it squared today,” Leonard Gibbons said from inside the office.
Gibbons had flown up for the occasion. His black suit was nearly identical to the one he wore on the day they first met. He
pushed a tall stack of papers across the table. They had sign here notes sticking out the side.
Evan was almost ready to tell them: He was out.
“Let me take you through the fine print.” Gibbons held out an uncapped pen.
On the wall behind him hung a picture of Isaac and his timber crew at a summer barbecue. At least a dozen families. White
curlicues of smoke drifted up from the grill behind them. Tracey in her stained cooking apron, and Michael with his arm slung
around Isaac. At the bottom of the photo was Evan, a wide grin on his face. He couldn’t have been more than five years old.
His mother was kneeling beside him, holding his hand. Everyone looked toward the camera except Celeste, whose eyes were turned
upward. Evan wishes he could know what she saw.
Evan did not take the pen.
He stood up and excused himself. He left the trailer, climbed down the stairs onto the hard, wet ground. He hiked straight
into the spruce, the hemlocks, the cedars.
Voices in the distance. The grind of chainsaws and the smell of diesel. He watched a tree go down on the mountainside with
a familiar knot in his stomach. Trunks thicker than fuel barrels, leaving enormous root systems like underground graveyards.
He hiked past a yarder and its pendulous cables. He walked until his thighs burned, then paced in the mud.
Even in late winter, it was as green as he remembered. Emerald moss hanging, dew beading on pine needles. Heavy pine cones.
As a child, Evan did believe he could talk to trees. Celeste knew this; he whispered their voices to her, what they told him,
like ancient lore. She never looked away. She hung on every word.
Evan put his hand on the trunk of a western red cedar that felt as big as God and pressed his ear against the trunk. He stayed
there for a long moment, the bark pressed into his skin, as if he was waiting for instructions.
And the forest held its own song: the geese honking overhead, the rush of a nearby river, sap trickling, the sway of feathery branches. The three-syllable vibrato of an olive-breasted flycatcher above: I-see-you, I-see-you, I-see-you.
When Celeste died, Evan asked Isaac to spare certain trees, the big ones, the ones he could wrap his arms around and feel
the pulsing of a deeper place. Evan thought she would have wanted that. Isaac laughed. “Those sailboat hippies are wearing
off on you,” he’d said. He felt the murky shame of it, even now.
But he still loved these trees.
The sky was clearing, the sun pale yellow. The low background din of machines, the occasional pop-pop of engines. The smell of fresh sawdust.
He stepped away from the tree.
He’d come this far, and everyone here was depending on him. Maybe even the forest. Wasn’t it best to change something from
the inside? Celeste always said so.
In high school he’d chosen selective, sustainable logging for his senior year science project. He’d pored over the strategies
at Wildwood, the renowned ecoforest on Vancouver Island, where careful stewardship had saved an old-growth forest. They were
foresters with more trees than they started with. The details were blurry now, but could he find a way?
And maybe give Annie what she needs at the same time?
He hiked back down, through the songs of dying trees, the brigade of chainsaws, the growl of the skidder, the shouts between
lumberjacks. These were men that his payroll would be supporting.
He had to find a new path.
Evan returned to the trailer, its corrugated metal walls and muddy carpeting, the stale smell of coffee. He didn’t look anyone
in the eye. His armpits were sweaty. Ed’s gaze pierced through Evan’s skull.
Evan signed. He gripped the pen so hard it left indents in his fingertip.