To Be a Logger

by Lois Lenski

  The Johnson Logging Company was making a clear-cut on a steep, precipitous slope on one of the highest points, 4500 feet. Uncle Irv was headed for this location. Big Joe was their hook-tender. He had climbed and rigged their spar-pole and now he was engineering the job.

  Uncle Irv’s truck ground its way steadily on. The road was a mere rocky ledge now on the edge of a deep precipice. A tiny stream could be seen down in the valley far, far below. On the other side, great trees lined the hillside and seemed to touch the sky. Across the valley Joel could see mountainsides still thick with timber, and others logged off, with stumps, logs, and slash left lying open to the sun.

  “Why do they log so high up?” shouted Joel.

  “Got to go where the timber is!” answered Uncle Irv. “As the crow flies, we’re only about five miles from River Road. But by this woods road, it’s fifteen or more.”

  The road was now so narrow there was no room for passing except at certain wider shoulders. The empty truck always took the outside, the loaded truck the inside. At one bad place, a loaded truck met them, coming away from the landing. Uncle Irv had to back to the shoulder to let it pass. A dog rode on the water-tank platform back of the cab. The driver, Jerry Watson, honked, the dog barked, and Uncle Irv waved. Joel sat there on his high perch, eating cherries like a king, spitting the pits out on the floor. He was happier than he’d been for a long time.

  Uncle Irv pointed across the valley to a clear-cut.

  “That’s where we’re going,” he said.

  But there were many more curves and rough places before they got there. And when they did, they came in from a higher level. At a switchback, Uncle Irv drove in forward, then backed down a long distance to the landing, so the truck would be facing out for leaving.

  Now at last they were there, high, high up on the steep mountainside. Joel had never been so high before. Only high-lead logging could be done on a steep pitch like this. Cat-logging would not work here. The cats would roll. They could be used only on level ground.

  Joel jumped down from the truck to stretch his legs. He walked to the brink and sat down. Uncle Irv came too and pointed out the mountain peaks, some covered with snow, and told him their names. Joel looked for the logging crew but could not see them. Uncle Irv sent him back up the slope behind the landing to sit on a stump and watch.

  “It’s not safe to stay too close,” he said. “Sometimes things go whizzing by when you don’t expect them.”

  Dad and the crew were working on the steep slope below, out of sight. The pitch was so steep, they often had to hold onto trees or brush to keep their balance.

  Joel sat down and looked around.

  On the landing sat the donkey-engine and the shovel, one on each side of the spar-pole, which was heavily rigged with guy wires, spreading out in all directions, anchored to tree stumps. The machines were busy. The donkey-engine roared and clattered, whistles shrieked, men gave signals, and high overhead a cable went swinging carrying a dangling choker. It disappeared over the hillside, where the choker-setter waited till it settled, then fastened it round a log.

  He scrambled out of the way, the whistle-punk gave a signal, the whistle sounded, and the log was lifted up into the air, snapping off small trees in its way. Up to the landing came the big log and found its place on a pile of others. The chaser unhooked the choker and stepped out of danger. The shovel-operator circled his boom around, picked up the log with his grappling hooks, circled back again, and set the log neatly on the waiting truck.

  How exciting it was! What fun to watch!

  Joel saw one large log after another come up as if by magic over the side of the mountain, all for Uncle Irv’s truck. He loved the tangy odor of the freshly cut logs. Once during a delay, the chaser came up to talk to Joel.

  “Why don’t you come take a ride on one of them logs?” he asked.

  “It might be a little bumpy,” said Joel.

  “You gonna be a logger like your dad?” he asked.

  “Sure am,” said Joel, grinning. “Couldn’t be nothing else.”

  There were so many signals, so many piercing blasts of the air whistle, Joel could not keep track of them all. One meant stop, no questions asked. Two meant go ahead—tight line. Three meant go back—slack line. To the loggers, each blast spoke in a language they understood. It was as if the whistle talked to them, saying: “I’m coming!” “Watch out there!” “Be careful!” or sometimes even “Danger—watch out!” Five shrill blasts meant “Accident,” Joel knew, and he hoped he might never hear it.

  Above the noisy din of the engines, the whistles, the roars and clatters, the whining of the blocks and cables, Joel could hear his father’s booming voice—barking out orders, telling the men what to do. Everything depended on Dad, the hook-tender—the lives of all the men in the crew, the number of logs taken out in a day and the success of the whole logging enterprise. How proud he was of Dad!

  Noon came, the whistle blew, the engines fell silent and the men stopped work. The crew came up over the brow of the hill—Dad, two choker-setters and the whistle-punk. The donkey-puncher, the chaser, and the shovel-operator all came, too. They brought their lunch buckets and Uncle Irv and Joel joined them.

  There was Dad grinning, sweat and grime trickling down his face. His shirt was wet and dripping and his pants were covered with dust and pitch and grease and grime. Like those of the other men, his pants were stagged—cut off and fringed above his calk boots. His arms were strong with bulging muscles. What a wonderful thing to be a logger like Dad.

  The men crowded in a shady spot beside the logging truck to eat lunch. They opened their tightly packed lunch buckets and began to gobble. Meat sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, apples, and hunks of cheese quickly disappeared. Then the jokes began.

  When Joel opened his bucket, out jumped a bullfrog!

  “Now who …?” There was no use asking. Joel turned red in the face and the men laughed.

  They passed a can of Copenhagen around and helped theirselves. They began to brag about who could jump farther, run faster, eat more, fight harder, yell louder than anyone else.

  “Golly!” said Eddie Wykoff, the new choker-setter. “One of my leg’s gettin’ shorter than the other!”

  “That’s from workin’ on the steep slope,” said Jake, the shovel-operator. “Never thought you’d be loggin’ vertical, didja?”

  “Naw,” said Eddie. “I like to be on the level.”

  “More fun when it’s straight up and down,” said Big Joe.

  “Put a cat on that pitch,” said George Barker, the other choker-setter, “it’d turn a somersault and land in the creek at the bottom of the canyon.”

  “Almost did that myself,” said Eddie. “Lost my balance once, felt myself a-goin’, grabbed a little tree and held on tight!”

  The men laughed.

  “How come the Forest Service wants a clear-cut here?” asked Jake. “They can’t replant. Seed would be washed out and there’s no soil for roots of young trees.”

  “Douglas fir won’t grow in the shade,” said Eddie. “That’s why they make a clear-cut.”

  “But Douglas fir trees got to have plenty of water or they’ll die,” said Big Joe. “How can you keep ’em wet on a slope in the boiling sun?”

  “Waste o’ time all that re-seeding and planting by hand,” said Lou Weston, the donkey-puncher. “Selective cutting is better …”

  “Provided you don’t kill all the little trees gettin’ the big ones out,” said George.

  “Best way is to leave some old trees to re-seed theirselves,” insisted Lou. “Be faster, too, and not take so much of the taxpayer’s money.”

  “They’re crazy to burn it off after a clear-cut,” said Jake. “Soil can’t stand those high temperatures, nothin’ will ever grow there again.”

  Al Duncan, the chaser, spoke up.

  “You’ll never see a planted forest come to maturity, mark my words!” he said. “It just makes fodder for the next forest fire. All that fresh gr
een stuff burns like tissue paper.”

  Eddie Wykoff looked thoughtful, but said nothing.

  “What bothers me,” said Big Joe, “the government won’t let nature have its way. Those Forest Service boys are great for poison, they’ve gone crazy on spraying. Anything that eats tree seed, they say is an enemy. So they spray and kill the birds, chipmunks, rabbits, and wild life. It’s plumb crazy.”

  “Thinnin’ out the timber in selective logging is no good either,” Al Duncan went on. “Look at the old forests. Best timber grows thick, close together, no side branches. There you get the longest, straightest, finest logs, no knots. That’s the timber brings the best price.”

  “Well, boys,” said Big Joe, “too bad the Forest Service don’t ask a good bunch o’ loggers like us for advice. Just remember them little ole college boys down there knows a lot more than we do, ’cause they read it in a book! Let’s get back to work.”

  Eddie got up and his left foot gave way under him. He began to limp.

  “Told you one leg’s got shorter than the other …”

  George Barker, the other choker-setter, had dropped off to sleep.

  “We got a dead man here,” said Lou Weston. “Bring me a rose, Joel, to put on his ear.”

  Whatever they said was funny. Joel roared with laughter and George woke up.

  “No more foolin’,” said Big Joe. “Them logs down over the brink are waitin’ for us.”

  He turned to Joel.

  “Son,” he said, “you better help Uncle Irv chain up them logs so they don’t fall off his truck!”

  “O.K.,” said Joel, grinning. “I sure will.”

  “You goin’ all the way to White City to the Mill with him?” asked Dad.

  “Oh, sure!” said Joel. “I wouldn’t miss that for anything.”

  “O.K.,” said Dad.

  Dad was glad to have Joel here. He wanted to boy to learn all he could about logging.

  The load was not ready yet. Another log was needed to top it off. So Joel waited.

  The men went back to their places. The engines began to rattle and bang, the whistles shrieked, the cable flew overhead with the choker on the end. More noise, more signals, but the log did not come up.

  What was wrong? Joel waited impatiently. He was eager to go. Uncle Irv stood by, restless too, watching.

  Then came five sharp whistle blasts. Five shrill blasts—one, two, three, four, five, one after the other. The machines on the landing shut down at once. The chaser ran over and talked to the shovel-operator.

  Something was wrong.

  Joel looked at Uncle Irv, his heart beating fast.

  “Somebody hurt?” He could hardly say the words.

  Uncle Irv stood stiff and tense.

  “Just some trouble down over the hill,” he said. “Maybe a snag fell or the log got caught on something … lots of things can happen. Might be a widow-maker or …”

  Uncle Irv was putting him off, Joel could tell. He was trying to keep him from knowing the truth.

  Something had happened. Somebody was hurt. The silence was ominous. Overhead a big bird flew. Was it an eagle? A buzzard? Joel knew all about accidents. People pretended they were not afraid, but they were, deep down underneath. Why, any minute somebody could trip and fall down that steep pitch into the canyon. Eddie had joked about it, but …

  Somebody was hurt, Joel knew it. But not Dad. It couldn’t be Dad. O God, don’t let it be Dad. Dad’s too strong, too brave, too careful. Dad’s not afraid of anything. Dad’s been hurt before, all those concussions and broken ribs and … It can’t be Dad. But if it isn’t, it must be somebody else. Was Joel wishing that somebody else was hurt just so Dad would be safe? Maybe a snag just bopped somebody on the head. That’s nothing, it could happen to anybody. Maybe they just needed a new saw down there under the hill. Somebody broke the old one.

  Yes, that was it. They needed a saw.

  The whistles shrieked again. Six times! Six sharp blasts. Joel counted—one, two, three, four, five, six.

  He looked. Lou Weston, the donkey-puncher, was taking the saw down to them. That was it. They needed a saw.

  But no, it wasn’t a saw. It was a stretcher. Jake was helping. Down over the brink they went.

  The air was still now. No machines rattling and banging. Only the song of a bird, a lilting happy song to rend a boy’s heart. Somebody hurt. Not Dad—don’t let it be Dad, not Dad. Joel kept saying it over and over. He stood there like a statue.

  Uncle Irv had gone. He had left him and gone over to talk to Jake. They waited at the edge. It seemed an age. Then as last the stretcher came up, vertically. It had a man tied on it.

  Joel could not look. He ran to the logging truck and climbed up into the cab. He sat there, dry-eyed and fearful, his heart pounding. He did not know it, but he was now, at twelve, experiencing the hardest part of a logger’s life, the reality of danger.

  Uncle Irv found him there. Uncle Irv was smiling, so it wasn’t Dad, after all.

  “That crazy kid, Eddie, almost rolled down the canyon,” said Uncle Irv. “He had a bum ankle and then he let that log roll on it …”

  At last Joel could speak. Relief came in a flash.

  “Did it get mashed?” he asked.

  “Not too bad,” said Uncle Irv. “They’ll take him to the hospital and put a cast on it. They’re puttin’ him in the crummy now.”

  It wasn’t Dad, after all. How thankful Joel was!

  “You still want to go to the mill with me?” asked Uncle Irv.

  “Sure,” said Joel.

  The load of trouble left as fast as it came.

  Joel climbed down from his seat to help Uncle Irv. The last log did not get loaded, so Uncle Irv decided to go without it. Joel carried the heavy chains to him and watched as he threw them over the logs and tightened the binders with the swede. Then they were ready to start.

  They climbed in the truck again. Taking off up the shill, Joel reached out to some bushes and grabbed a branch.

  “Better throw that out,” said Uncle Irv. “That’s poison oak. Remember: ‘Leaves in three, let them be!’”

  Going up the steep grade, the loaded truck seemed to barely crawl. Then it reached the highest point on the peak of the mountain and began the long, slow, and devious trip downward to the valley. In and out and around the mountains, most of the time on a rocky shelf ledge, the huge truck made its careful way.

  Down on the valley road, Uncle Irv had to make two stops. The first was at the scaling station, where the logs were measured and the number of board feet estimated. The other was at the weighing station, where the load was weighed.

  When they passed the Drum Cash Store, no one Joel knew was in sight, but Uncle Irv sounded his horn anyway. Then there was still another mountain to crawl over and in and around, before they got to White City. Joel dozed most of the way, so when the truck stopped, he woke with a start. Uncle Irv took the chains off and the logs were quickly dumped into the millpond, making a great splash. Joel watched from his seat in the cab.

  On the way home, Uncle Irv told him about one bad curve in the road called Devil’s Elbow, and how many trucks loaded with logs had gone over the bank. Joel told Uncle Irv about the truck driven by the college boy.

  Once Uncle Irv’s truck skidded off to one side, but Uncle Irv quickly pulled it back on the road again.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Joel. “You gettin’ sleepy?”

  “No,” said Uncle Irv. “Didn’t you see that deer?”

  “A deer?” asked Joel. “Where?”

  “Gone in the woods now,” said Uncle Irv. “If I’d a hit him, we’d a had a nice mess o’ venison for the freezer.”

  Joel laughed.

  Uncle Irv stopped in front of the Drum Store to let Joel off. He ran home all the way up the woods road.

  Chapter Eight

  THE FIRE

  “Ow, ow, ow!” Joel hopped around on one foot, dripping with water. Jinx stood by, holding an empty bucket in her hand.

/>   “I burned myself! Ow, ow, ow! Don’t touch me!” screamed Joel.

  Mom came up to see. Joel had to stand still and explain.

  “Well, I had matches in my pocket …”

  “Now you know, Joel, you’re not to take matches,” Mom began.

  “My knife musta rubbed against a match in my pocket and lighted it and set me on fire and burned my leg!”

  “And your pants, too,” said Mom. “I can smell the cloth.”

  “I put it out, I doused water on him,” cried Jinx.

  “She threw a whole bucket of water on my head,” said Joel, laughing. “My head wasn’t on fire, my pants were. She almost drownded me!”

  Mom put salve on the burned spot and made Joel change his pants.

  “Now don’t you go to carryin’ matches again, hear?” she said. “You want to burn yourself up? Or do you want to start a forest fire?”

  Joel shook his head, sober now. Forest fires were no joke, not to a logger, nor to his son. Forest fires could wipe a man out and leave him with nothing. Joel knew that.

  This was his third bad burn. He had had two before. Last winter he got a burn on his backside, from backing up too close against the heater. It was a cold day for Oregon. There was a whole foot and a half of snow, the most Joel had ever seen in his whole life and he thought his feet were going to freeze off. That’s why he got that burn—just trying to get warm.

  Then on another cold day, he got a burn on his stomach from spilling hot coffee. It would not have happened if Jinx had not tried to grab the cup of hot coffee out of his hand. He was trying to get warmed up inside, that time, just drinking something hot.

  But this time—how those matches ever got struck and set fire to his pants was a mystery. He could only blame it on his knife, his trusty knife. His knife was useful for a hundred jobs, so he always had it with him.

  “Joel, run down to the store and get the mail,” said Mom. “And here’s a list. Pick up these groceries.”

  Joel wandered down the woods road, taking his own time. His bike was broken now, beyond repair. He stopped once to throw a stone at a bluejay, but did not hit it. He peeked under the culvert to see if Jinx’s rainbow trout were still there. But they were gone. Somebody must have fished them out and eaten them.