The Forest Prime Evil

by Alan Russell

  “We don’t have much money,” said Josh, “but we were able to scrape up an eight-hundred-and-twenty-two-dollar retainer for you.”

  It was madness to consider taking the case. The week before I had turned down an investigation in Palo Alto, claiming it was too far out of the City. Palo Alto is all of thirty miles south. Humboldt County is over two hundred windy miles north of San Francisco. It was away from familiar territory and resources, and the money probably wouldn’t even cover expenses. I’d likely be placing myself between a rock and a hard place—no, worse, between a forest and a chain saw.

  “We already have your cabin ready,” Josh said, “fully stocked with provisions.”

  Probably a shed, I thought, with tofu.

  “I know a place,” Josh said softly, “where spotted owls have been seen. I can show you where a marbled murrelet nested.”

  Threatened species. Ones I didn’t have on my life list. Birds that need the ecosystems of old-growth forests to maintain their existence. But, more than the birds even, I could feel the call of the redwood forest, of the towering giants.

  “I’ll drive up there today,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll take the case. I’m just going to ask a few questions and do a little looking around.”

  Josh nodded. He didn’t look surprised, didn’t even give me the satisfaction of saying “Timber.”

  2

  “OFFICES OF STUART Winter. May I help you?”

  They say behind every great man there is a woman. No one’s bothered to make mention of the fact that behind a lot of mediocre men are great women, which I suspect is a relatively accurate analysis of my relationship with Miss Tuntland. She’s my answering service and much more, having handled my calls for the better part of a decade. You’d think in that time we would have met, but our rendezvous have always been talked about, never realized. Although I have endeavored not to invade Miss Tuntland’s privacy, I have been told by others that she isn’t ambulatory, and gets around by wheelchair. Because of that, she apparently established her own unique cottage business of being the voice and brains of businesses such as mine. I picture her as a modern-day Emily Dickinson. I know better than to ask how she imagines me.

  “I’m leaving town, Miss Tuntland,” I said. “Going to the great northern woods.”

  “Creditors again, Mr. Winter?”

  “Nope. I’m branching out.”

  She sighed, said something about how wooden silence would only encourage me, then demanded a full explanation. I told her what I knew, which, as she was quick to tell me, wasn’t much, but it was enough to worry her. Humboldt’s logging controversies had drawn heavy media coverage. Miss Tuntland warned me that I was stepping into a modern-day version of a range war.

  “Call me Shane,” I said.

  “Did you say ‘Lame’?”

  I don’t like losing arguments, so I usually don’t so much debate with Miss Tuntland as attempt end runs. “It will be a little getaway,” I said, “an excuse to capture some glimpses of a few rare birds.”

  “Cuckoos, dodoes, or loons?”

  “Grouse.”

  Miss Tuntland didn’t give me a moment to savor my comeback. She never does. “As if investigating a potential murder isn’t bad enough, you’re mixing it with politics. That smacks of a death wish to me. Proposition One-fifty isn’t taking any prisoners.”

  The election was a month off. Or was that the war? Proposition 150, the Great Trees Initiative, called for the preservation of all old-growth forests in northern California. Proponents said it would save ancient trees. Opponents said it would kill the logging industry. Some said it had already killed the Green Man.

  “I’ll be careful,” I said.

  “At the risk of being labeled a codependent or an enabler,” she said, “what can I do to help?”

  “Only if you have some free time,” I said, “and only if it doesn’t inconvenience—”

  She’d heard my song and dance before and interrupted me. “What do you need?”

  “I’d like to know more about the Green Man. The behind-the-scenes personal stuff. I’d also be interested in any scene-of-the-death speculating.”

  I could hear Miss Tuntland jotting down my requests. When the sound of her scratching stopped, I could sense her pen, and a few of her questions, hanging in the air. Quietly, she asked, “He died in the middle of an ancient forest, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. About a half mile from his goosepen.”

  “Goosepen?”

  “The early pioneers of redwood country coined the term. It describes a hollowed redwood. Supposedly the settlers kept geese in the gaping redwood crevasses. There’s that much room in them.”

  “And that’s where the Green Man lived?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hope yours is a wild goosepen hunt, Mr. Winter.”

  “So do I.”

  “Call me every day,” she said.

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  I threw my bag into the bed of my old Ford pickup. I patted her sides. Metal. These days that’s a novelty. A decade earlier I had reluctantly accepted the truck as payment in full for a case I had worked on. At the time, I had a car and was in the habit of using the city’s public transportation to get around. I had set out to sell her but ended up selling my car instead. The truck looked the same as when I had gotten her, save for one word I had deleted from the bumper sticker she came with: I’D RATHER EAT SHIT THAN DRIVE A FOREIGN PICKUP. I’d taken a razor blade to the expletive but decided the rest of the ornery message fit the truck. Maybe fit me too. I was willing to let other drivers fill in the blank. My guess was that Vanna didn’t need to turn the letters for anyone to solve the riddle.

  We started out a little after ten, late enough to miss most of the Marin traffic. The road opened up, and we made good time through Sonoma County, passing by the manicured wineries that have taken over most of the oak-savanna country. The northern stretch of Highway 101 is called the Redwood Highway, and after a time the reminder didn’t come only through signs. While in Sonoma County, I spotted the first of many eighteen-wheelers carrying a load of felled redwood. Mills began to appear on both sides of the highway, their stacks of lumber piled high. I saw the by-products before I started to see stands of the real thing.

  For sixty million years the Pacific Northwest coniferous forest remained untouched. It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that man started mining the redwoods, Sequoia sempervirens. Since that time, over ninety-five percent of the ancient redwoods, the virgin old growth, have been logged. That was what the activists were rallying about—that last four or five percent of old forest.

  The redwood vistas started opening up to me from the road, hints of what was to be, green and living hundred-foot growth that pointed the way to greater things. The trees weren’t the only roadside attractions. There were billboards, about one every mile. Most exhorted NO ON 150! There was only one dissenting message. I was barely able to make out the wording, but I think it read PRESERVE OLD GROWTH—YES ON 150. The billboard looked like a termite ad. It was riddled with holes—had drawn more shotgun and rifle fire than your average Swiss-cheesed no-hunting sign.

  It was midafternoon when I stopped for lunch in Garberville. The town’s official main drag was Redwood Drive, which featured the usual collection of motels, restaurants, and stores. Its unofficial main drag was marijuana. Even with the legalization of pot in the Golden State, the government continued to use helicopters, spraying, and infrared sensors in their high-tech campaign against illegal cultivation. Informed sources say the enforcement has worked about as well as prohibition.

  It had been almost a dozen years since I’d last been to Garberville. I was pleased to see it hadn’t changed. I remembered the town for its hippies, and rednecks, and trucks, and dogs, all of which still looked to be around in abundance. When you land in Garberville, you experience a time warp. The sixties don’t seem to be dead. Long hair abounds, as do tie-dyed shirts, blue jeans, bandannas, and beards. Even peace symbols
haven’t gone extinct.

  I grabbed a quick lunch, then got back on the road. Our destination was Bayshore and its satellite Trans-Mississippi shop. Josh had given me three names, or at least nicknames, of those he said were the wanted poster perpetrators: Red, Cincy, and Coop. They were co-workers, and, as the story went, Red was the ringleader. Josh’s unimpeachable source was the girlfriend of another shop worker. My version of her story was at best fourth hand.

  Bayshore proved to be a small town with little in the way of industry besides the tiny mill. The town rested on the banks of the Van Duzen River. The Trans-Miss operation was a specialty shop, a plant that customized wood and created value-added wood products. Logging activists have long decried the “third world” lumber status of the Northwest. They claim the area is nothing but a colony to offshore manufacturing nations, supplying raw materials instead of the more lucrative finished wood products. With unemployment running high, many in the area questioned that practice. Exporting lumber was welcomed; exporting jobs wasn’t.

  The Bayshore shop was probably just large enough to deflect criticism that nothing was being done to ensure jobs for locals. There wasn’t a guard or even a receptionist to block my way. I walked inside and saw about a score of men actively at work, most at saw stations. By itself, the name Red didn’t help me much. Every person in the world with red hair has been called Red at one time or another. I had hoped that some flaming red hair would make it easy for me to spot my man, but I was thwarted in my search. Everyone was wearing protective goggles, and, if that wasn’t disguise enough, virtually all the men were also wearing caps. I could identify plenty of beer and liquor logos but little in the way of hair. Rather than try to walk around and peek under cap bands, I approached the man nearest to me.

  “Looking for Red,” I said.

  He pointed off to a corner but was careful about doing so because his band saw was still running. His learning hadn’t come without a price. His pointing hand was short a finger.

  There were two men working in the corner. They were applying lacquer to some wood. One was wearing a Wild Turkey cap. The other preferred bikes to booze; his headgear identified his kinship to Harley-Davidson, with biker accouterments to match. Harley had dark, greasy hair that extended over the neckline of his T-shirt. That left me with the Wild Turkey.

  Both men watched my approach. Neither offered a greeting. Red was about forty, his partner in priming a decade his junior. Physically they weren’t at all alike. Red was small, had light coloring and freckles, while Harley was big and swarthy. What were similar were their mannerisms. It was as if they had studied from the same handbook on how to be a tough case.

  Red got a little vigorous with his brushwork and slopped some of the lacquer near my shoes. Harley found that funny. Instead of backing away, I moved closer.

  “Better watch it,” I said, words that drew their fingers into fists. I pointed to the ground. “You might slip on the floor.”

  Both of them looked down. I took that moment to push my hand near Red’s face. I could have sucker-punched him, and he knew it, but instead I waved my business card under his nose. As he raised his head, I raised the card with it.

  “We have some mutual friends, Red. I wonder if we might talk.”

  “Can’t. Can’tcha see I’m working?”

  Harley found that funny, which inspired Red to new heights of comic genius. He took his brush and tried to paint the card I was offering him. Harley was beside himself with that one.

  “If you can’t talk now, how about later?”

  “What friends we got in common?”

  “How about I tell you that over a beer?”

  “You buying?”

  I nodded.

  “Then I hope we got lots of friends to talk about.”

  Harley just about split his sides. I asked Red where and when we could meet. He said his shift ended in another hour and suggested we meet at the Blow Hole. He also suggested I bring plenty of cash.

  The Blow Hole was a bar in which to get drunk, and not much else. It was a few blocks from the water but didn’t have a view. The original owner had attempted a whale motif, but, judging from the graffiti and graphic artistry, the bar was known by a sexual nickname unrelated to a whale’s nostril.

  The bartender had a penchant for tattoos, leather, and black eyeliner. She had the coloring of a spider on a no-blood diet, and the thinness that usually comes from living on cigarettes and booze. Her hair was dyed jet black and stood out all the more because of her paleness. Her lips and nails were also painted black. I expected Dracula to fly in any minute.

  The Blow Hole didn’t stock any single-malt Scotch. I ended up ordering a bottle of beer and surreptitiously tried to wipe the lip of the bottle with my sleeve. Spider Lady noticed, though.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I only spit in the mixed drinks.”

  I thanked her for the tip and opined that I’d better stick with beer or wine.

  “Beer,” she said. “I piss in the wine.”

  Despite California’s no-smoking-in-public-spaces laws, she pulled out a cigarette. I looked around for matches and found an unemptied ashtray with a matchbook that had three strikes still intact. Someone hadn’t wanted to be called out. Or found out. A certain Randi had autographed the matchbook with her name and telephone number. She had also underlined a price of a hundred dollars. Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match. I closed the cover on Randi, struck a match, and cupped the light with my hands. I navigated through the breezy bar and connected with her cigarette.

  She inhaled deeply and a few seconds later exhaled a lot of smoke and a thanks. Then she took another drag, settled in closer to me to be friendly, and in the process emptied her lungs near my face.

  “You going to charge me extra for the ambient smoke?” I asked.

  She maintained her proximity, and her sassiness. “I don’t charge extra for that.” The interpretation for anything else was left open.

  “If I buy you a drink, will you stop smoking?”

  “No. But I’ll blow in another direction.”

  She slowly licked her lips, appeared to be enjoying her little performance. I put a ten-dollar bill on the counter. It didn’t stay there long. She poured herself a shot of Gold and knocked it down.

  “No lime?”

  “Do I look like I have scurvy?”

  She kept to her part of the bargain and blew the smoke away from me. Even if her dark lips kept coming back close to mine. “Tina,” she said.

  “Stuart.”

  “When you came in here, Stu, I didn’t think you belonged. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “I have the same problem. I’m not sure whether I’m a chameleon or a lounge lizard.”

  “I sort of like squamous things myself.”

  Tina opened her leather jacket and lifted her tank top up to display a tattoo of a snake corkscrewing downward into her belly button. When she dropped her shirt, I made a mild protest: “I didn’t have enough time to identify the species.”

  “I think you did.”

  She could afford to be uninhibited because we were the only ones in the bar. I commented on the lack of bodies. “It’s early,” she said. “We don’t get the Chablis sippers in here. We get our regulars, the beer-and-a-shot types.”

  “Is Red one of those regulars?”

  Tina looked surprised. “You know him?”

  “He’s supposed to meet me here in a couple of minutes.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  If she was sharp enough to pick up on my evasiveness, I wondered what else she had noticed over the past few months. “I met him about an hour ago. I’m a private investigator looking into the death of the Green Man.”

  I passed her my card. Tina gave it a careful look. “Why do you want to talk with Red?”

  I pulled out the wanted poster, attached a twenty with it. “Ring a bell?”

  The money interested her more than the poster. She pocketed the president and pushed the r
est of the paper back my way. “Coupla months ago Red didn’t have any problems buying himself, or no one else, a drink.”

  “That all?”

  “Shouldn’t it be? Red’s here more than he’s home. He’s an asshole who hangs around with two other assholes.”

  “Cincy and Coop,” I said, remembering Josh’s names.

  She nodded.

  “I think I met one of them today. A wannabe biker type.”

  “That would be Cincy—which isn’t short for Cincinnati—it’s short for sinsemilla. Coop dresses even stupider.”

  “Their fashion statements don’t exactly interest me,” I said, tapping the poster.

  “Why don’t you save my lips some wear,” she said, “and tell me what you know first?”

  “I know that the posters were circulated around Humboldt County. I know that Red and his friends were behind them.”

  “And that’s all you know?”

  I shrugged.

  She laughed, mostly to herself. “Maybe that’s all there is to know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Red’s full of shit. He talks big, but that’s probably all it is. He’s been acting like he’s a vigilante. He’s gone out of his way to make people think that he’s been putting them EverGroaners in their place. My guess is that he hasn’t done much more than drive by their camp a few times, throw some beer cans, and yell ‘fuck you.’ To Red, that would be a major campaign.”

  “But he’s indicated differently? Implied he’s done more?”

  “He’s all but announced himself as C-I-Fucking-A.”

  “In what ways?”

  “Like the dough he got. Like how he got the money to print the posters. He told people he has friends in high places. I told him we all know pot farmers. He didn’t think that was funny.”