by Logan Miller
“I would appreciate it if you allowed me to discipline Ruben.”
Marlo’s tone had changed and Gates turned around to meet the challenge. I’m not afraid of you, faggot.
“If he’s going to be hurt,” Marlo continued, “I’m going to be the one hurting him.”
“He disrespected me.”
“His mother is my sister. I love her very much. A father may beat his own child but he would never allow his neighbor to do so. We accept this as part of our social contract. Would you allow me to discipline your daughter?”
“I’d kill you.”
“Good. We understand each other.”
“I’m the fucking law around here. Remember that.”
Marlo took a pair of handcuffs from the work shelf and tossed them across the room. They had been sitting beside the manila envelope. Gates caught them.
“You are one form of law,” Marlo said. “I am another.”
12.
The old wood truck labored up the wilderness road that snaked through the mountainous forest, gears grinding, belching plumes of black diesel over the dried water ruts and gnarled depressions, its worn tires firing stones against the battered steel undercarriage and dust flaps.
“I had that dream again,” Caleb said across the cab to Jake, who was behind the wheel.
“Did you tell her?”
“Yeah.”
“Why’d you do that?” Jake said. “That’s something I’d do. Why don’t you just hang out with her and let her be? Keep your mouth shut and not hurt her feelings.”
“I don’t know. Can’t figure it out.”
“Well next time take it easy on her. She’s dead for Christ’s sake.”
He first had the nightmare a few months after their mom had died. She was sitting in the passenger seat of his truck with her purse on her lap, eager to go somewhere with him, a much anticipated day trip. Her hair was pinned back in a bun and she was many years younger than the time of her death. Jake was at the wood splitter. He waved at them from across the yard. He was not coming with them for some reason.
“Where are we going?” she asked. “I love surprises.”
She smiled at Caleb and rubbed his shoulder with the tender affection a mother always carries for her child, from infant to adulthood, the touch never adjusting for the years and ages gone by. He would always be her baby.
He turned off the truck and swiveled to face her.
“You’re dead, Mom. We’re not going anywhere.”
She turned away and stared out her window and began to cry and then admitted through her tears what he had just told her. She said she was sorry. Sorry that she was dead. Sorry that she’d left him and his brother for this other place.
He had the dream often and loathed it for the pain it caused her, for the pain it caused him. And yet it was always the same and he did not know why he felt the need to tell her she was dead and make her cry. Always he awoke with crushing guilt and a dark anger toward himself. Why did he have to tell her? Why couldn’t he just let his mother be? Why couldn’t he just drive down the road and enjoy his time with her? He had no answer.
Jake lifted his steel-toed boot from the gas pedal and the diesel slowed and stopped where the road forked in the wilderness.
“Let’s try the western slope today,” he said. “I remember seeing a bunch of dead snags up there last spring.”
Then suddenly it was upon them, shooting out of the forest. Loud. Screaming. Two-stroke engine. The ATV barreled around the corner from above and hurled a cloud of gritty dust into the truck cab as it thundered down the mountain, its driver some crazed blur of a lunatic negotiating the ruts with reckless agility. His red-mirrored goggles flashed in the sunlight and his long black hair kicked around without a helmet.
“Whatever happened to forest etiquette?” Jake said, waving at the dust.
“I bet he was never a Boy Scout.”
The two-stroke engine noise was now far down the mountain and they didn’t think of the ATV again until later in the day.
“Western slope?” Jake said.
“Let me text Lelah before we lose service.”
“Tell her to put the beer on ice this time.”
“Get your own lady.”
“I’m working on it… Tell her to hook me up with one of her friends. She doesn’t even have to be good-looking.”
“You already fucked them all.”
“Yes I did.” Jake reflected, quite pleased with himself. He’d fucked them multiple ways, not only in the biblical sense. “But I’ve matured. I can honestly say I’m a one-woman man now.”
Caleb glanced up from his phone. “No. You’re a no-woman man right now.”
“They weren’t exactly church girls. Just saying.”
“You’re the one humping your hand.”
“Yeah, and I’m tired of it. My dick’s got fucking calluses on it.”
“That’s why they invented lotion.”
“What about butter?”
“Shut the fuck up and drive.”
The wood truck lurched forward and climbed the mountain toward the ridge several miles above them.
ᴥ
Early in the afternoon Lelah set the case of Lagunitas IPA on the counter at Bode’s General Store.
“And a bag of ice, please,” she told the cashier.
Then a hand touched her shoulder from behind and she started.
“Is there a party I should know about?”
She turned around to face her father. Fresh coffee steamed out of his plastic mug that said DAD on the side. She’d bought it for him last Christmas. He must have come in through the back door. She hadn’t seen the cruiser out front.
“Invite only,” she said.
Gates leaned over and kissed his daughter on the cheek.
“I’m just bringing the guys some beer,” she said.
“Where, the wood yard?”
“Jeez, Mr. Nosy, I’m not a suspect.”
“It’s the job. I can’t help it.”
“I’ve been an adult for a long time, Dad.”
“But you’ll always be my little girl.”
They were the only customers inside. Gates strained to read the peculiar name on the case of beer.
“Lah-goo-KNEE-tuss. Is it any good?”
“The guys like it.”
Lelah paid the cashier and grabbed the case from the counter.
“Love you, Dad.”
“Love you, too. Say hello to the boys for me.”
She pushed through the glass door and climbed into her Ford pickup. She turned over the engine and shifted into reverse when a knock on her window startled her again. Her father opened the passenger door.
“You forgot your ice.” He laid the bag inside the cooler resting in the passenger foot space.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“You gonna be home for dinner?”
“Probably not. Don’t worry, we’ll drink responsibly.”
Lelah pulled onto the blacktop and headed toward the pine-forested mountains.
Gates planted his coffee mug in the dash holder and drove the cruiser out of the gravel parking lot in the opposite direction toward the lonely mesa land where the afternoon gusts had whipped the horizon a dusty orange.
ᴥ
Chainsaws wailed through the forest as Caleb and Jake harvested pinyon on the western slope four thousand feet above the arid valley that ran north to Colorado and south to Santa Fe.
Caleb could see the wind sweeping through the canyons below them and wished for a little breeze at least. They were on the lee of the mountain and the sun beat harshly on the back of his neck with brief mercy from a few passing clouds. But it was always good to be outdoors. Couldn’t pay him enough for an office job. Sit in a starchy suit in a stuffy cubicle. Nope. The burned skin, the rough, grease-stained hands that looked twice his age, the splinters that swelled his knuckles and inflamed the meat of his palms, the swamp crotch that rashed and chafed like road burn from his balls to the top o
f his ass crack in days of fierce heat, it was all worth the freedom of the mountains and the open air. He could chew tobacco when he liked. Spit when he liked. Fart when he liked. Piss wherever he pleased. Not that he and his brother could ever qualify for an office job or anything other than labor outdoors. But he liked to entertain the thought that he was controlling his destiny, that he was doing the work he wanted to do, by choice. In war, you had very little choice.
They killed the saws and started hauling the cut sections of wood over to the log splitter.
ᴥ
Lelah neared the turnoff for the wilderness road. In the approaching distance there was a man walking on the shoulder against traffic. He was carrying a jerrican and his red-mirrored goggles winked in the sunlight as she drove past him. She rounded a bend and noticed what she assumed was the man’s ATV parked in a turnout. Bummer. Running out of gas. Oh well, Bode’s isn’t that far. If she had recognized the young man she would have stopped. But she didn’t know him.
She continued down the asphalt a short ways and made a left turn onto the wilderness road that would take her to her man.
13.
Caleb set a log on the holding plate and the maul drove down and halved the wood with a ferocious clack. He tossed the halves to Jake in the back of the truck for stacking and repeated the process. An assembly line of firewood making. Chop, toss, stack. Chop, toss, stack. Chop, toss, stack. Hours of it. Thoughts wandered but not too far. Always be cautious of the driving maul. One lop, chop off your hand.
Then Caleb saw her truck approaching through the dry tinder. He thought about kissing her and the cold beer that she was bringing and he turned off the log splitter and smiled.
Lelah parked at the edge of the clearing and craned her head out the window.
“Anybody thirsty?”
“Do my balls hang low?” Jake said.
Caleb threw a piece of split wood at him and it banged off the plywood siding and rattled around the truck bed.
“What, now it’s all formal ’cause you guys are finally getting hitched?”
Caleb helped Lelah out of her truck and kissed her glossy lips. He walked around to the passenger door and removed the cooler from the foot space. He opened a bottle for Lelah and underhanded a bottle up to Jake in the bed of the wood truck. But Lelah handed the bottle back to Caleb and said in a whisper, “I probably shouldn’t have one. I’ll just have a sip of yours.” She glanced down at her belly. “Just in case.”
“Just in case of what?” Jake said.
“She’s driving,” said Caleb.
“That never stopped me from having a good time.”
“Maybe it should have.”
“Whatever,” said Jake. “I’ve only lost my license one time.”
Jake opened his bottle on the side of the tailgate with a bang of his fist. He took the cap between his fingers and snapped it into the forest where it caromed off the side of a pine tree.
“Hey Jack-Dick,” Caleb said, “this isn’t your bedroom.”
“It’s just a bottle cap.”
“Give a hoot, don’t pollute,” said Lelah.
Caleb dropped his bottle cap into the cooler and then took a swig. Jake nearly downed his beer in one hungry thirst.
“Thank you, Lelah,” Jake said. “Damn that is good.”
“Anytime.”
“You might want to marry her, brother,” Jake said. “Before I do.”
Caleb and Lelah sat on the tailgate together and stared through a break in the trees at the valley far below. A hundred miles south the Sangre de Cristo Mountains appeared to float above the haze. And then a light breeze finally carried through the trees and cooled the sweat below his eyes. Yeah, thought Caleb, it doesn’t get any better than this. A hard day’s work. Cold beer. Your lady beside you.
He nuzzled up to her neck and placed a kiss just behind her left ear.
“You smell so good,” she whispered.
“I smell like ass.”
“No, you smell like man.”
He chuckled and kissed her again and threw his arm around her. He brought the beer to her lips and she took a self-consciously small sip.
“I gotta pee,” she said.
“And we were just getting romantic.”
“Sorry, babe. I’ll be right back.”
Caleb hopped down from the tailgate and limped around to the cab. He took a roll of toilet paper from the bench seat and handed it to her.
“Any tree you like, babe,” he said. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“Enjoy your beer.”
“Watch out for mountain lions.”
Lelah turned around. “Seriously?”
“Bigfoot too,” Jake said. “He’s a horny fucker. Sneaks up from behind. Boom, bam, you’re pregnant.”
“Lovely image,” she said.
Caleb threw another piece of wood at Jake and Lelah disappeared over a rise in the forested slope.
She stepped through the undergrowth and looked behind her. She could no longer see them. She paused and admired the wind in the treetops and watched them sway as if in a chorus. There was an ageless harmony in the woods that awakened her senses in new ways. They became sharper, more acute. She remembered first experiencing the sensation on a camping trip with her father. The air seemed alive, humming, touching her skin. It felt good to her in a way that she could not explain. Since then she always had an affinity for nature, for the beauty that held a mystery and origin of its own, not wrought by man. The outdoors were a spiritual place to her and it was where she wanted to die if ever she had the choice.
She searched the pine needles with her eyes for snakes and bugs and dropped her jeans and started to pee. The stream of urine disrupted her thoughts until it felt as though the entire forest vibrated with the sound. Her face reddened and she reminded herself that she was alone. There was no one for miles.
She was nearly finished when her body shuddered and her eyes snapped wide. She pulled up her jeans, breathing heavily, her stare fixed on the—
What was it?
A man-made clump of camouflage.
A sleeping bag?
No, much too large.
A tent? Yes, that’s what it was.
Looking over her shoulder the entire way she hurried back over the rise.
“What’s wrong, babe?” Caleb asked, noticing the alarm on her face.
“Did you see Bigfoot?” said Jake.
“I think there’s someone over there,” she said.
“Were they watching you?” Caleb asked.
“I didn’t see anybody. Only a tent… I think it was a tent. I’m not sure.”
“Maybe they want a beer,” Jake said, leaping down from the truck bed.
The brothers started up the rise and Lelah followed behind, catching up with Caleb to hold his hand.
It was indeed a tent, a camouflage green pup tent, crouching in the undergrowth.
“Hello,” Caleb called out as they approached. He listened for an answer but there was none. He motioned for Lelah to stand behind them.
Caleb unzipped the door flap and looked inside. He saw a sleeping bag, an empty bottle of whiskey, cigarette butts, a stack of canned goods, and a large pile of trash. Jake peered over his shoulder.
“Been up here awhile,” Caleb said.
“They need to call a cleaning lady. It stinks in there.”
There was something unsettling about the scene for Caleb. It didn’t feel right and he had come to trust his gut when it spoke to him.
But Jake snooped around the campsite, not sharing the concern, his curiosity driving him. He noticed something peculiar on the ground. He kneeled to investigate and pulled a thin plastic drip line out of the pine needles. It ran along the forest floor in both directions, up and down the slope.
“Check it out,” Jake said.
“No, let’s get out of here.”
But Jake had already started following the drip line down the slope deeper into the forest, ducking under the branches and
clawing undergrowth, like a dog on a scent.
Caleb called after him. “C’mon, Jake. Let’s go.”
Jake couldn’t hear his brother right now or any voice other than the one in his head calling him further into the unknown. To what he hoped to find. He had his suspicions. He’d heard rumors. Heard tales about the gold growing in the hills and the men that grew it.
The powerful smell hit him first.
And then it was there.
He pushed through the evergreen curtain and beheld a clearing of ten-foot high marijuana plants, laden with ripe buds, days from harvest.
“Holy fucking money trees,” Jake said out loud. “There you are.”
Caleb and Lelah parted the branches and halted beside him. An elaborate network of drip lines fed water to the illicit garden from an aluminum water trough, which was partially concealed in the undergrowth at the base of a trickling spring.
“Jake, this is nothing but trouble. Let’s get out of here while we still can.”
Jake stepped further into the garden, indulging his lust and curiosity, the plants towering above him.
Caleb grabbed Jake by the arm and yanked him back.
“Let’s go, Jake.”
But Jake shouldered him off and admired a large bud drooping from a plant. The THC crystals glittered like iridescent fairy dust in the slanting light, rubies, diamonds, and amethyst floating in the mist of an ethereal water globe, a treasure growing in the silent intimacy of the forest, a treasure to be found and claimed by the worthy. He brought the pungent fruit to his nose. He could smell his dreams in the cannabis. He could smell the money. It was literally in his fingertips. Here, growing before him was the lucky break he needed. The lucky break this poor hardworking white boy had been waiting for his entire life. Right here. Right now. It’s yours. Take it.
ᴥ
To the dome. To the dome.
Ruben had slugged two Mickey’s wide mouths to the dome on the walk back from Bode’s and now didn’t give a fuck about the gas mishap. He set the green case of Mickey’s on the back of the ATV and rounded the bag of dripping ice over the top of the case and fastened the load with a bungee cord. He twisted off the gas cap and let the jerrican empty into the tank.
