by Lee Goldberg
There it was.
Faint and muffled, but insistent…
It was like laying his head on a grave and hearing, through the six feet of dirt beneath him, someone pounding on the lid of their coffin.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
And as he heard it, he could see the blood continuing to seep from the wound that he'd cut in Matt's flesh.
There was no denying the evidence, as unbelievable as it was.
The dead man was alive.
Lyle ran to a phone and called 911.
CHAPTER FOUR
November 18, 2010
The B. Barer and Sons Sawmill was built in the mid-1800s along a curve in the Chewelah River when the waterway was the best method for transporting logs from the northern forests to the mill and keeping them fresh until they could be cut.
Those forests had long since been stripped, graded, and reforested with tract homes, and the heavily polluted river was no longer used as a timber highway, but scores of logs were still stored in the man-made bay, less out of necessity than as a nostalgic nod to B. Barer and Sons' history.
So Matt figured that practice would end soon. Big changes were being made at the mill by the current generation of Barers in their effort to keep the business from collapsing, and nostalgia wasn't something they could afford anymore.
In desperation, the Barers had finally brought in an outside consultant, whose previous experience had been in the soft drink industry, to modernize their operations and find ways to save money. Roger Silbert was hated by the hard-core loggers, some of whom were fourth-generation workers in the yard, because he knew nothing about wood and had probably never held a saw in his life.
For decades, the mill ran on six circle rigs in four separate buildings. The logs were loaded on a sliding carriage and fed into a circular saw, where they were shaved and squared off into cants, which were turned after each cut by men with cant hooks, then re-fed down the line to the blade to be cut again and again, the lumber off-loaded and stacked with each pass.
It was a manpower-intensive operation that during peak periods required three eight-hour shifts and a hundred men throughout the plant to get the job done.
Matt had worked at the lumberyard since he was a teenager, and had done every job there was to do, before becoming a sawyer, the man running one of the circle rigs, an old Frick mill.
But for the last few days, he'd been running and testing a brand-new mill, a Wood-Mizer 3500, which Roger Silbert had urged the Barers to try out.
With the WM3500, the logs were loaded by a computerized, hydraulic system onto a stationary bed and were cut by a thin-kerf, laser-guided, vertical-blade band saw that passed over the cant on a gliding head.
Matt operated the system robotically from a chair at the head of the mill rig equipped with joysticks at the end of each armrest.
The log was turned hydraulically, and every piece of lumber that Matt cut from the cant was swept away by metal prongs behind the saw head as it slid back into starting position after each forward pass of the blade.
The freshly cut lumber was pushed down the line by a series of incline conveyors, roller decks, and pneumatic kickers and then off-loaded with hydraulic arms into neat stacks.
The WM3500 was a pleasure for Matt to operate. He was attuned to it in a way that he never was with the circle rig. It was all highly computerized, and yet cutting with it felt like an extension of himself and as natural as chopping wood each morning.
But he was ashamed of himself for liking it. He didn't have to be a professional hatchet man from Zippy Cola like Roger Silbert to recognize the savings that the WM3500 represented. The new system was more precise, yielding more lumber in less time. But it required half as many men to operate as the old circle rigs.
It was good news for the company and bad news for log hands and off bearers like Andy, who'd made their living with cant hooks and heavy lifting. It wasn't good for Deerpark, either.
Matt shut down the rig when he saw Rachel Owens come into the mill. She dressed like everyone else, in jeans and a flannel shirt, but she made it look stylish. She worked in the front office handling sales, but Matt knew she could do any job on the line as well as any of the men. Her father had been a logger.
Rachel approached his chair. “I was watching you cut. It looks like fun."
"Come on up and try it," he said.
"Only if I can sit on your lap."
He immediately blushed and looked around to see if anyone had heard her. She laughed at his embarrassment.
"Relax, Matt, nobody is paying any attention," she said. “Besides, it's not like there's a law against flirting."
But the truth was her remark was less flirtation than an honest expression of her desire.
They'd been seeing each other casually, going to movies and having dinner downriver in King City, for a few weeks now, but their romance hadn't advanced beyond some passionate kisses in the cab of his truck.
Something was holding him back and she knew exactly what it was-the simple gold wedding band that he still wore.
At first, the ring made him even sexier to Rachel. It demonstrated that he was a man of passion and deep emotion. But now she wanted to wrestle the ring off of his hand and throw it in the river.
The ring made Matt feel like he was cheating on his wife every time Rachel kissed him. He'd never said that to Rachel, of course, but it was obvious the way he tensed up whenever she touched him.
She thought it was time for him to get on with his life and, more urgently, get it on with her.
"What brings you down here?" he asked.
"You, of course. I'm looking forward to Saturday. Were you able to get us reservations at the lodge?"
He nodded. “It seems like everybody in Oregon had the same bright idea to go skiing this weekend, but I managed to get the last two rooms."
She'd call and cancel one of them as soon as she got back in the office. She had big plans for the weekend. “That's great. Deerpark is the last place we're going to want to be this weekend."
"Why is that?"
"Management is real impressed with the yields they're getting from this rig. They're going to retire the Fricks and order three more WM3500s."
"How many men are they going to let go?"
"Fifty, maybe more," she said. “It'll be in stages as the new rigs come in. But I'm sure your job is safe."
"I wasn't thinking about mine."
"Andy isn't your responsibility. He's barely even responsible for himself."
"That's why he needs me. When are they making the announcement?"
"Silbert is breaking the news to everybody today at lunch."
That gave Matt a whole hour to worry about how Andy would take it.
February 20, 2011
When the emergency operator answered, Lyle was struck dumb. He didn't know what to say. He certainly couldn't tell her the truth, or they wouldn't send anyone, except maybe a couple of cops to take Lyle in for a psych evaluation.
"I'm Lyle Whittaker, a coroner at the Clarion County morgue. I've got a man here suffering from extreme hypothermia and in need of immediate medical attention."
"Did you say the morgue?"
"Yeah, and this is where he'll stay if you don't send the paramedics right away."
So the operator, Roxi Witt, made the call and sent the paramedics.
But even as Roxi did it, something nagged at the back of her mind…
She was at the end of her eight-hour shift. No calls had come in about anybody being found nearly frozen.
The only incident she'd heard about was yesterday, a little girl who'd found the frozen body of a skier who'd been buried by the avalanche.
That had happened three months ago.
But this certainly wasn't a crank. The readout on her computer screen confirmed the call was coming from the county morgue and that an assistant coroner named Lyle Whittaker was scheduled to be on call that morning.
So, after car
eful consideration, Roxi looked around to make sure no one was watching her, opened her purse, and found the tiny scrap of paper that she'd been saving for years, just waiting for the right moment to come along.
And if this wasn't it, nothing ever would be.
She took out her cell phone and called the National Enquirer tip line to claim her five hundred bucks.
Lyle wheeled Matthew Cahill into the hallway, where it was warmer, and covered him with every sheet he could find to help him generate some body heat.
The paramedics arrived within a few minutes and immediately hooked Matt up to an EKG, which, to Lyle's astonishment, showed a weak heartbeat, in the low twenties. Critical condition for a living person but not bad for a dead man.
They put Matt on oxygen, started an IV, and were about to wheel him out to the ambulance, when one of the paramedics repeated the question that Lyle couldn't avoid answering any longer.
"How long was this guy frozen?"
Lyle handed the paramedic a copy of the forest ranger's report, the morgue log, and a bag containing Matthew Cahill's personal effects, which included his wallet, his watch, and a wedding band.
"Three months," he said and dashed off.
The paramedic was sure that he'd heard wrong, that the coroner had actually said three minutes, but he was in too much of a hurry to get the patient to the hospital to chase after Lyle to confirm the obvious.
CHAPTER FIVE
November 18, 2010
Roger Silbert gathered the employees in the yard, climbed up on the back of a flatbed truck, and addressed them with a bullhorn. He was thin, smelled of breath mints, and talked too fast. Today he wore a B. Barer and Sons cap to show that he was one of the guys despite his jacket, tie, and gold cufflinks.
There wasn't a man in the crowd who owned a pair of cufflinks or would buy a shirt that didn't have buttons that could do the job.
Matt stood beside Andy at the front of the crowd. Rachel stood on the periphery with the rest of the staffers from the front office building. The Barers were conspicuously absent, vacationing in Palm Springs for three weeks, as they did every winter.
Silbert began by reminding them of the bad economy, the sharp drop in new home construction nationwide, the influx of cheap lumber from other countries, and all the other ills that afflicted their industry, as if they didn't already know all about them, as if those worries weren't already keeping them up nights, or causing them to kick their dogs, or spend their weekends drunk, or put off going to their doctors for fear of what that hard bump under the skin, or that chronic pain, or that bleeding from the ass might turn out to be and what it might cost.
"We've had to take a hard look at how we do business and embrace new technologies that lower costs, conserve energy, produce greater yields, increase efficiency, and offer more operational flexibility," Silbert said.
Andy turned to Matt. “How many guys you got working on that new rig you've been playing with?"
Matt hesitated a second before answering. “Two."
"Shit," Andy said.
"So I'm pleased to announce that we'll be replacing our old, outdated equipment with the latest, cutting-edge equipment," Silbert said. “No pun intended."
He laughed, just to make sure everyone knew that his pun was intended and that he thought it was pretty witty. But half the men there had no idea what a pun was and no one was in the mood to laugh.
Andy spoke up. “When you say you're lowering costs, what you mean is that you're going to fire people."
"Unfortunately, there will be some reductions in our workforce," Silbert said. “But those who remain will have the security of working in a leaner, stronger, more efficient company that's better prepared to take on the challenges of the future."
"What you mean is that half of us, guys who have been here ten, twenty years, natural-born woodsmen, are going to be kicked onto the street to starve while you collect a bonus and move on to fire more hardworking men at another company in some other industry you don't know shit about."
"Let's not get overdramatic," Silbert said. “Nobody is going to starve. We'll be offering retraining programs, absolutely free, for all of our temporarily displaced workers."
"Training in what?" someone in the crowd called out.
"Word processing, website design, solar panel installation, computer repair," Silbert said, "and other exciting jobs in the new economy."
"I want to train for your job." Andy unbuckled his pants, let them drop, and then mooned Silbert. He bent over and peeked at Silbert from between his legs. “All I've got to do is figure out how to get my head up my ass and I'm qualified."
The crowd cheered and laughed. Silbert shook his head like a disapproving parent and lowered his bullhorn. There was nothing more to say and he knew it.
Matt smacked Andy's shoulder. “Pull up your pants. You're just making things worse."
"We're losing our jobs, Matt. Exactly how can things get any worse than that?"
"You might have kept yours before you did this."
"Yeah, right," Andy said, hiking up his pants.
Matt turned towards Silbert, who was walking back towards the main office building, and called out to him. “Are you going to fire Andy?"
Silbert stopped and faced Matt. “He's the first and only name on the list so far. He'll be out by the end of the day."
"If he goes," Matt said, "I go, too."
Andy looked at his friend in astonishment. A hush fell over the crowd.
"You're the best sawyer we've got," Silbert said. Then he moved a few steps closer to Matt and looked him in the eye. Matt could smell the wintergreen Life Savers on his breath. “But the beauty of the WM3500 is that now anybody can be the best sawyer we've got. Good luck to you both in your new endeavors."
Silbert turned his back on them and walked away. Matt looked past him to see Rachel, staring at him not with shock or anger, as he expected, but with disappointment.
"The fucking asshole," Andy muttered, snatching a long-handled cant hook from a nearby woodpile and advancing on Silbert from behind.
Matt rushed forward, tackling Andy just as he was raising the cant hook over his head. They hit the ground hard, rolling in the mud and sawdust, Matt wrestling the cant hook from Andy's hand.
Andy turned Matt on his back, straddled him, and raised his fist to deliver a hammer blow.
"Andy!" Matt called out.
His friend froze and blinked hard, like he was snapping out of a daydream. Andy looked at Matt, then in surprise at his own fist, poised to smash his friend's face in. He slowly lowered his arm and unclenched his fingers.
By now other loggers had gathered around them. They pulled Andy off of Matt, who raised his hand up to his friend for a lift to show there were no hard feelings.
But Andy just backed away until he was swallowed up in the crowd and disappeared from Matt's sight.
Another logger took Matt's hand and helped him up. Matt thanked him, slapped the dirt off his clothes, and went to clean out his locker.
The Longhorn looked like a sawmill that served drinks. The walls were decorated with blades and vintage sawing tools, and just about everybody in the place when Rachel came in was a B. Barer and Sons employee or, in the case of Andy and Matt, ex-employees.
Andy was at the center of attention, holding court at a table overflowing with mugs and pitchers, people buying him more beers than one man could possibly drink, though he was certainly going to give it his best try.
Matt sat at the bar, where he had been nursing a beer and a bowl of mixed nuts for an hour, idly watching the celebration of the bravado that had cost Andy his job.
Rachel took the stool beside Matt and helped herself to a sip of his beer.
"That was a stupid thing you did today," she said.
"You're right," Matt said. “Silbert probably deserved to have his head caved in."
"You know what I'm talking about, Matt. You didn't have to go down with Andy."
Matt shrugged. “He had every r
ight to be angry and didn't deserve to be fired for it."
"That's not what happened. Andy is undependable, irresponsible, and an asshole. He knew he'd be the first to go, and that's why he pulled this stunt, so he could go out feeling like a hero. But you ruined it for him. He's still an asshole and you're the hero."
"I don't feel like one," Matt said.
"That's how you know you are one," she said. “Because the real heroes know being one means you've got to lose something big in the deal. What are you going to do for money now?"
"I can get by without much," Matt said. “Besides, I'm pretty good with a hammer and saw and there's always plenty of folks who need carpentry work."
"Only there's not many folks here who can afford it."
"So I'll work in trade," Matt said. “Patch a mechanic's roof in exchange for him fixing my transmission."
She studied his face now, seeing something there she hadn't seen before. “You really are okay with this."
"I take things as they come," he said.
"What did Andy Goodis ever do to deserve you?"
Before Matt could answer, Andy sauntered over, bringing two overflowing mugs of beer and two dozen of his admirers over with him.
"I love this man," Andy said, setting the mugs down hard in front of Matt and spilling beer on the counter. “Matthew Cahill is the greatest human being in the Pacific Northwest. Am I right?"
The crowd cheered and whooped and applauded, which clearly embarrassed Matt. He dismissed it all with a shrug.
"You think what he did today was great, you should have seen him in the seventh grade," Andy said, then turned to Matt. “Remember that?"
"Nobody wants to remember anything they did in junior high," Matt said. “Why doesn't somebody put a song on the jukebox?"
Matt reached into his pocket for some change, but Andy wasn't going to be so easily distracted. He turned back to regale the crowd with his story.
"The principal came into first period and accused me of breaking into his office and leaving a pile of horseshit on his desk. He hauled me out of my seat by my ear," Andy said. “But before we even got to the door, you know what Matt did? He confessed."
