The Language of Trees

by Steve Wiegenstein

  He pried apart the stiff pages of the old book, realizing after the first page that the information was even older than the book’s date had led him to believe, that it was a reprint. Waste of a penny. Still, any knowledge was better than no knowledge at all. As he drifted into sleep, he tucked a bookmark into the volume after the preface. He’d try the first chapter in the morning, before he set out to buy more land. Scenes and adventures, indeed. He penciled a checkmark next to the line where he stopped reading for the night: The reading of books of geography makes but a feeble impression on the mind, compared to the actual objects.

  Chapter 4

  Newton Turner saw the wagons cross the river and ride past, a man and a woman in the front one and two women in the rear, but thought little of it. His mind was on the lumberman and his milltown off to the west, and by breakfast’s end he had decided to go see it for himself. In the late morning he saddled a chestnut gelding from the community barn and struck out. It would be a day’s ride, more or less, so he took a slab of ham from the larder and wrapped it in paper for the trip.

  Sarah Wickman was in front of her house and watched him ride by, a quizzical look on her broad, bland face. It would have to be Sarah who saw him leave. Still, he needed to say something.

  “I won’t be back at suppertime,” he said curtly. Of course that wouldn’t be enough for a woman like Sarah, especially since he was riding away from town rather than toward it. “I’m going to check out this lumber mill,” he added.

  “That’s a long trip,” Sarah said. “Can I give you some food?”

  “Not so long,” he said. “I’ll cut through the woods after I round the mountain.” Newton lifted the ham. “I’m set for food.”

  He reined off, eager to make time, and trotted past Charley Pettibone’s house without stopping to visit. Beyond Pettibone’s house was a mile of narrow road that hugged the bluff along the riverbank, then French Mills, and from there he’d have to work his way west over at least one great ridge. His geography got fuzzy after French Mills.

  Passing the Masterson farm, the first one after the valley opened out again, Newton was surprised to see the two wagons pulled up to the rail in front of the house. Old Masterson was not the type to invite strangers to visit. But he didn’t have time to speculate if he wanted to reach the railroad in good daylight.

  French Mills drowsed in the early autumn morning, Durand’s tavern shuttered until nightfall, and only one man out in the fields, cutting wheat with a scythe, of all things. Hadn’t these people the money for a mechanical reaper? Daybreak had owned their old McCormick for decades until it wore out and was replaced, at Newton’s insistence, with a fine new Champion.

  It wasn’t fair, him doing all the thinking and half the work for the colony. Well, not half the work, that would be a lie, but his share and more. He could already see how the debate over the timber was headed. John Wesley Wickmam would oppose it because he was a founder, and he didn’t believe anything should change from when the founders started the colony in the 1850s. If John Wesley had his way, they’d all still be out with scythes. Charley Pettibone was a practical man. Surely Charley would hear these people’s proposals with a practical mind. That left Josephine Mercadier.

  He didn’t like to think about Josephine, his half-sister. Years ago his mother had told him the whole story, how his father had lapsed in his younger years with Marie, Josephine being the result, and how she and Marie had patched themselves together after a while. And then Marie’s injury and his father’s death had closed that chapter of their lives. And how if she had learned to live with the strangeness of the situation, then he might as well, too. She had gone to Marie’s that same night and told the whole story to Josephine, to clear the air of any uncertainty.

  The children had always known of something irregular in their lives—the odd looks, the murmurs behind them—and Newton guessed that Josephine had been told years before by her own mother. She always had a knowing air.

  But it was not their past that disturbed him. It was their present. The hardened look of appraising near-hostility on Josephine’s face could not conceal the beauty behind it, just as her simple dress only reminded him of the body beneath. He imagined the neck underneath her long black hair, the hips and shoulders whose shape he divined from the undergarments she hung on her clothesline every Monday. He wasn’t alone. Even Charley Pettibone, as devoted to his wife Jenny as any pup to its master, grew tongue-tied in Josephine’s presence.

  There was nothing to be done about the situation but deny and endure.

  After the last farmhouse, he picked his way slowly up Marble Creek, searching for a likely hollow that would lead him west over the ridge into the next valley. In the late morning he found one, and by midday he stood on the crest, resting his horse in a stand of tall pines while he tried in vain to see the way ahead. But the dense underforest on the shoulder of the ridge, oaks and maples with their dead leaves still clinging, blocked his view. No matter. Downhill was the only way to go, and with any luck he might pick up a trail.

  The slope bottomed out at a dry creek bed spotted with intermittent puddles, but no trail. He picked his way along the rocky twists of the creek bed, and wondered whether his idea to visit the sawmill was worth the effort.

  The brush ahead of him rattled. Newton reined up. Out here on the border of nowhere—it could be anything. Bear. Cougar. Outlaw. He hadn’t thought to pack a rifle. But the horse didn’t seem agitated, and a moment later he heard the bray of a mule.

  “Hello up ahead,” he called.

  Two men on mules pushed through the brush in front of him. The back man had a six-foot crosscut saw over his shoulder.

  “Well, ain’t this a spectacle,” the front man said. “Who are you, the Old Man of the Mountain?”

  “No,” Newton said with a laugh. “I’m from over on the St. Francis. I’m looking for this American Lumber and Minerals Corporation everybody’s talking about.”

  The men rested their mules. “This is the head end of Happy Hollow we’re in, here,” the man in front said. “Follow it down to Big Creek and you’ll be there.”

  Newton took the ham out of his saddlebag, cut himself a slice, and held the rest out to the strangers.

  “I’ve et,” said the back man with a wave of his hand. But the front man took the ham and carved off a slice.

  “This is good,” he said. “Smoke it yourself?”

  “Yeah,” Newton said and took the ham back.

  The man chewed thoughtfully. “Good timber up on that ridge?”

  “I guess so,” Newton said. “Some tall trees.”

  The man squinted into the distance. “I hate them rocky gladetops,” he said. “That’s rattlesnake country.”

  “I didn’t see any.”

  “Of course not. You never see ’em until it’s too late.”

  The second man shook his head and shifted the saw to his other shoulder. “Ain’t rattlesnakes out this time of year.”

  “Oh, yes there are. They get on them rocks and stretch out in the sun.” Newton didn’t feel like discussing the habits of rattlesnakes. “Why do they call this Happy Hollow?”

  The front man scratched between his mule’s ears. “I’m happy,” he said. “Luther’s happy. You look happy. So why not?” He gave the mule a kick and it moved forward a couple of inches. “Anyway, let’s go cut some timber. My grandma owns most of the land up this hollow and she told me to see what I could find.”

  “What’s your grandma’s name?” Newton said. “Maybe I know her.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t start in on me. Grandma don’t like anybody nosing in her business.”

  It was time to get moving before things got tense. “Well, thanks for the directions,” Newton said. “I want to see this sawmill for myself.”

  “Looking for work? They’re hiring.”

  Now it was Newton’s turn to be cagey. He shrugged. “Curious, more than anything.”

  He twitched the chestnut’s reins, move
d past the men, and noted the mules were draped with ropes for dragging out logs. He had no doubt the men intended to steal timber, but was not about to challenge them, not two-to-one with a couple of tough birds.

  “Come on, Luther, let’s cut some trees.” The first man dug his heels into his mule’s sides and within moments Newton was lost from them except for the faint sound of a mule braying as the men urged it up the slope. The valley slowly opened out as he rode. By the time he reached the first farmhouse, he could hear the sound of the sawmill in the distance.

  The milltown consisted of a double line of houses snaking up the hollow on each side of a rough road. Two crews of men framed houses with three wagon-loads of supplies in between. Newton stopped and watched them work. A man returned for more lumber, and Newton tipped his hat.

  “Boss’s house is over there, if you’re looking for work.” He pointed with his hammer to a larger house on the shoulder of the hollow, which unlike the rest had a coat of paint.

  “Thanks.”

  “Filling up as fast as we put ’em up,” the man added. “Eight men to a house.”

  “That lumber looks green.”

  The man laughed. “Hell, yes. We ain’t got time to season the lumber. It’ll season this winter and pop every nail we’re driving now. Cut on the half-round, too, so walking across the floor will be an adventure once it starts to warp.”

  At the mouth of the hollow a rough-framed church and a store sat across the road from the sawmill, and all three within pissing distance of the railroad track. The sawmill was a tall open-air building with a corrugated iron roof, underneath which a long central shaft drove four large circular saws. The boiler that drove the shaft sat at the far end of the building, and the entire apparatus was swarmed by crews of men who unloaded logs, pushed them through, off-loaded the planks into a great pile beside the tracks, oiled the junction boxes, and fed the boiler with scraps of wood. Everyone moved too fast. Newton suppressed a shudder to think about how easily a man could lose his hand to one of those blades, or catch it in a drive belt. He turned away and rode up to the house on the hill.

  A clerk perched at a desk just inside the door looked up. “Can you read or write?”

  “What’s that to you?” Newton snapped.

  “If you can read, I’ve got more jobs you can do,” the clerk said. “No need to get peevish.”

  “I’m not looking to get hired. I’m here to see J. M. Bridges on a business matter.”

  “Mr. Bridges is out.”

  “All right then, Mr. Mason will do.”

  “Mr. Mason is busy.”

  “Now look here, I rode half a day—”

  “I thought I recognized your voice,” Mason said, emerging from a back room, hand already extended. “You people are quick to a decision. Come on back, and we’ll draw up a bill of sale.”

  “Oh, we haven’t decided anything,” Newton said. “I just came out to look over your operation, get a little better informed.”

  Mason’s face solidified. “You must have a lot of free time, roaming the countryside on sightseeing tours.”

  “We might talk a little business, too.” Newton wasn’t entirely sure what he had in mind but disliked seeming indolent.

  “Very well,” said Mason. “Let’s walk outside.”

  The instant Mason stepped outside, a boy dashed over from beneath a shade tree, awaiting orders. “Take this man’s horse to the stable, give it grain and water, and brush it down. Properly,” Mason ordered. The boy untied the reins of Newton’s horse and led it away.

  The ring and whine of saw blades pierced the bright fall air as the men stood on the slope in front of the house. From there, they overlooked the entire operation, a town-in-the-making of sorts, though a town without women for now.

  “Feels good to stand up and get outside for a moment,” Mason said. “All this scribbling over deeds and contracts is turning me into a hunchback.”

  “I should imagine,” Newton said. Every morning of his life, he had been getting up and going outside, so thinking of it as a special event made no sense to him. Such was the life of the city dweller, he supposed.

  “I’m sorry Bridges isn’t here. He liked your little village.” Mason rubbed his bald head with the palm of his hand. “Now about this business that you wanted to talk.”

  Newton remembered the ham in his saddlebag and had an idea. “We have more acres in flat ground than we have in timber,” he said. “At present it’s mainly in crops, but we could easily turn that land to livestock. We could supply you with fresh beef and pork, quality guaranteed.”

  Mason chuckled and gestured toward the railroad tracks. “I like your eye for opportunity, Mr. Turner, but this is not an opportunity we need. I send eight railcars north every day loaded with raw lumber, and as soon as we get our planing mill built we’ll send it up dry and finished. Hope to double that number in six months. That means eight railcars coming back empty. We ship in everything we need on those railcars, since we’re paying for them anyway. I’m up to thirty barrels of beef and fifteen barrels of pork a week.”

  “But is it any good?”

  “Who cares? Cook anything long enough and it’s edible. Nobody’s complained so far.” In the valley, all four saws stopped at the same time as the men loaded new logs onto the carriages, and the sudden silence came as a shock. Mason extended his hand. Newton shook it without realizing for a moment that the handshake was a farewell.

  “As Mr. Bridges told your meeting, we need trees, and we need the men to work them. Bring me those trees from Daybreak, Mr. Turner.”

  “I can’t do that on my own,” Newton said. “We decide as a body.”

  “The body obeys the head, sir. Your society is a charming place founded on charming ideals, but times have passed it by. The twentieth century is just around the corner. Convince your townsmen to sell us that timberland, and there’s a fifty-dollar bonus for you.”

  And with that he turned and disappeared inside.

  Newton’s horse had barely cooled down by the time he reached the stable, so he sat out front with the boy, who was whittling a slide whistle from a willow branch.

  “Where you from, young fellow?”

  “Annapolis.” He pointed south with his knife.

  “You come up from Annapolis to work here every day?”

  “Nah, I stay in the bunkhouse. I could never make it here in time. They blow the whistle at four a.m., and brother, if you’re not out and working by five you’ll hear about it.”

  “You seem a little young for that.”

  “Hell, Mama don’t mind as long as I send her half my paycheck every week. Little brothers are happy to have a body out of the bed. It was damn crowded in there with four of us. How about you? Where you from?”

  “Daybreak.”

  “You’re the crazy people I’ve heard about! Communists or something.” The boy appraised Newton. “You don’t look crazy to me.”

  “Well, I appreciate that.” The boy went on whittling, oblivious to Newton’s sarcasm.

  “How’s that deal work, anyway?”

  “We put everything we earn into a common treasury, and then we all vote on how to spend it. It’s simple democracy.”

  “Shit, where’s the profit in that?”

  “Did your Mama teach you to talk like that down in Annapolis?”

  The boy grinned and sat up a little straighter. “Hell, no. I learned it all on my own.”

  The return trip felt more familiar now, and when Newton reached the head of Happy Hollow he found four pine logs, each one three feet thick at the narrow end, lined up for removal. No sign of the log cutters. The logs had cut deep gouges in the hillside as they were dragged out, and Newton followed one of the drag trails to the top of the ridge. From there it was a slow trail down the other side until he reached the creek, where he could pick up the road. He didn’t want to push his horse too hard at the end of the day, so he let it walk at its own pace, drinking from the creek now and then. By the time he reache
d French Mills, darkness had fallen, but the horse knew its way home. He stretched out his back and dropped the reins to his lap.

  At Masterson’s farm, lamplight blazed from the windows, and to his surprise, the two wagons that had been parked there in the morning were still sitting in front of the farmhouse.

  Chapter 5

  Charley Pettibone waited until he was well outside of Fredericktown before he unshackled the prisoner and let him sit with him on the wagon seat instead of bouncing around in back. “Sorry for the manacles,” he said. “Sheriff ’s a bit zealous today, I guess.” The man looked to be ten years older than Charley, so even if he did turn out to be more dangerous than he looked, which wasn’t likely, Charley figured he could deal with him.

  “Your sheriff is probably in the paid employ of the American Lumber and Minerals Corporation,” the man said, rubbing his wrists. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have responded so harshly to a simple request to see their business license.”

  “We don’t hardly do that kind of thing down here,” Charley said. “Somebody wants to start up a business, they just do it. Don’t need a license.”

  “So I see,” the man quipped. He was tall and lanky, a good bit over six feet, though Charley guessed he wouldn’t weigh over a hundred and fifty pounds. His eyes were dark brown but his hair was sandy—maybe it had also been dark brown once and was now headed to gray? Charley couldn’t tell. His face was weathered and lined, but he seemed to be taking his night in jail with remarkable good humor.

  “And you got to admit, vagrancy’s an offense,” Charley added. “A man can’t just come to town, no money in his pocket, no relatives, just asking questions of people.”

  “Yes, he can. This is a constitutional republic, not a monarchy.”

  The man had a point. Charley shifted uncomfortably. He had his instructions, and Sheriff Pomeroy had been in no mood to be contradicted. “Be that as it may, my job is to escort you to the county line. It’s a full day’s ride, so we might as well not argue.”