Comes a Time for Burning Read online

  “I don’t understand,” Thomas said. “The ride out here took the better part of forty minutes…I assume a little less for young Simpson to ride into town to fetch me…you’re saying that this man has been caught up there for nearly two hours? Perhaps three?”

  “Well…” Bertram said, and shoved his hands in his pockets. “We got us something of a problem. I’d just as soon discomfort him a little than have to bury him.”

  Discomfort him a little. Thomas marveled at those words as a man, apparently broken in some curious and painful way, hung a hundred and fifty feet above the ground, his safety belt useless.

  “They’ve tried a couple things, but so far…” and Bertram shrugged. “We’ll know more here in a minute.”

  Thomas stepped back to more secure footing, digging his boots into the muck. The spar was situated on the very rim of a steep incline, and certainly the view from on top must have been spectacular. Thomas knew that when the tree, stripped of all limbs and its crown, was rigged with a wonder of ropes and tackle for moving timber, it would command a large section of land so steep that oxen or mules couldn’t skid the logs. The spar acted as an enormous, rooted crane.

  “He appears to be hung up on something.” Thomas lowered the glass. “I can’t make it out.”

  “That’s puttin’ it one way, Doc,” Bertram laughed and turned away, pulling out a pocket knife. In a moment the foreman returned with a small wand of limb wood. He shook off a geyser of moisture and then deftly nicked off the side twigs until he had a switch two feet long with a little fan top.

  “See, this is what we got.” He glanced up at the spar. The third climber had progressed to within fifteen feet of the pair above him. “He was cuttin’ off the crown, right there where it’s about two foot through. Maybe a little more.”

  He first held up the twig, matching against the huge spar to make sure that Thomas understood the model. Then, with a twist of the knife, he cut part-way through the switch just below the brush of remaining twigs. As he cut, his thumb bent the feathery crown over until with a snapping of fibers, it stood out at right angles from the stick, but not yet entirely separated.

  “So she pitches over like that, see. The crown’s supposed to break free, but she doesn’t.” Working the knife blade into the exposed end grain, he split the wand downward from the break of the crown, tugging a little on the top to widen the split.

  “See, this is what we got,” he said again. “And it looks like two things happened. After he lights the dynamite…”

  “Dynamite?” Thomas stared incredulously at the foreman.

  “Well, sure. He wants a banger. Wasn’t supposed to do that, but he goes ahead and does it anyway.” He made an imaginary circle around the stick with his index finger. “So he chops a girdle all around, see, right where he wants the top to separate. Maybe five, six inches deep. That don’t take too long. Easy enough to lay the charge, packin’ ’em in around the stick. Art thinks he used sixty or so.”

  He paused, amused by Thomas’ thunderstruck expression. “Got a bit of light rope, stringin’ them charges all together. Kind of a daisy-chain. All around where he wants the top to be blowed off. Then he cuts a good drop fuse. Good and long. Six, eight feet.” He shrugged and looked skyward again. “On a good day, that should give him time to drop down—five, six minutes, something like that. Unless he gets hung up on something. Limb stub, just about anything. Sometimes just a stubborn scab of bark.”

  “But dynamite? Whatever for?” He gestured around him at the groups of men, all captivated by the drama above. “An axe? Saws?”

  Bertram grinned at the young physician. “You ever run a one-man crosscut through a couple feet or more of sappy knots? That spar’s knot-studded like a stick of cheap knotty pine, Doc.” He held his hand flat and made sawing motions. “One thing to do it on the ground. But sideways a hundred and fifty feet up? Hangin’ by rope and spurs? You’re fightin’ it every inch you make. And an axe don’t make it any easier.”

  “But dynamite?” Thomas repeated.

  “Another thing,” Bertram said. “Up here on the headlands, the wind will come up here pretty quick.” He held up the twig and waved it back and forth. “That’s a hell of a wand. That starts dancin’…why hell, you can sweep yourself an arc across fifty foot of sky. Hard to hang on, sometimes.”

  “So what happened, then?”

  “My guess is that he had a skip or something like that. We’ve had some troubles with that if they don’t pay attention. Now normally, Art Mabry…he’s up there now…he’s the one who sets the charges. But this time, Sonny Malone went ahead and did it.”

  “A skip?”

  Bertram shrugged. “Most of the time, now, the fuse is long enough that after he lights it, he’s got time to drop down as far as he can, see. Do it right, and don’t get hung up, he can make it to the ground. That’s what we want to see—him clear of the spar. But something goes wrong, and the charge don’t go off. The fuse sputters out or something, or has a skip.”

  The foreman shrugged again. “Some of these fellas ain’t got the patience God shoulda gave ’em, and that’s where the trouble starts. That’s what the boys tell me happened here. Sonny goes back up to see what’s wrong. He’s ten feet below the charge when off she goes. And this ain’t his lucky day, see.”

  “I don’t see.”

  “Well, first he got himself a goddamn serious hang-fire, and even then, some of them go off, some don’t.” He reached out and touched Thomas lightly on the shoulder as if the physician wasn’t paying attention. He thumbed the top of his model tree to the side, the wood cracking but still attached. “So we got this. We got this split startin’ to run down the trunk, see. And that’s a lot of weight pitchin’ off to the side. Then the trunk splits, bang.” Bertram yanked at the top, and the split trunk yawned open where he’d started it with his pocketknife. “’Cept for that split, he mighta been okay. But the weight of the top just pried that trunk wide open. They’ll do that sometimes. Now, as that trunk splits—and hell, it can gape a dozen feet before the top tears free and the split slaps shut—well, let me tell you, it don’t take much gape before you’re flat run out of safety belt, even if you’re usin’ every inch you got.”

  “And then?”

  “If he don’t cut the safety rope, it’ll cut him. Well, it’s going to crush him like a damn banana slug slapped with an axe handle. Saw a climber cut clean in half once up in Vancouver.” He grimaced. “Weren’t all that clean, neither.”

  “The safety rope won’t break first?”

  Bertram shook his head and spat. “Sure as hell better not. They got a steel core, you know. But I tell ya…old Sonny there is damn quick. He saw what was comin’ and had time for one good swing with the axe. Cut the safety rope, then just hugged that tree and prayed, probably. See, it’s small enough around up there that a man can hug it. Well, almost, it is. Trouble is, when he hugged it, he got both hands in the split. The crown settled in the neighbor tree, and the split slapped shut. You got about five tons of crown pushin’ it closed now. Like a goddamn big rat trap, is what it is.”

  “My God.”

  “And there’s old Sonny, up to his elbows in a stick of spruce that won’t let him go. They’ve been doin’ some thinkin’, and we’ll see what happens. Lemme see that again.” He held out his hand for the glass. For a long time, Bertram watched the performance overhead. At first, Thomas thought he could hear one of the men calling, but then realized that the high-pitched keening, intermixed with a string of profanity so confused it sounded like jibberish, was uttered by the trapped man himself.

  “What are they going to do?”

  “Don’t know,” Bertram said. “I know what I’d do.”

  “I can send something up for the pain. Morphine would do it. Anyone can administer it.”

  “Got to have his wits about him,” Bertram said. “What little wits he’s got left after the dynamite.”

  “Hey!” The single word floated down from above.


  Bertram took a couple of steps closer to the tree, craning upward. “What’d you decide, Art?” Thomas moved up beside the foreman, one arm over his head to shield his eyes. The light caught the individual droplets now, streaming downward like miniature diamonds, just enough air movement to slant them against the dark green of the timber.

  “This crown’s just got to come off.” The man paused before adding, “There just ain’t no other way around it.” He was ten feet above the trapped logger, and with just a small effort could have drawn himself up to sit on the ragged, blasted pinnacle of the spar. “It’s hung up real good in the neighbor.”

  “You’re sure she’s holdin’ hard?”

  “Got a couple limbs right through a crotch. It ain’t goin’ nowhere. Hell, I could walk across it.”

  “What’s Sonny say?”

  It took a while for the logger to ponder that…or perhaps to ask the whimpering Sonny.

  “He ain’t sayin’ much, Paul. I guess he’d sure like to get down out of here. He can’t hear shit. That the doc from Port McKinney you got there?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well, if we got to cut Sonny’s arms away, maybe you could rig the doc up so he can come up and do it. I sure ain’t about to.”

  Bertram laughed. He stepped back, looking at the ground and shaking his head back and forth to take the kinks out of his neck.

  “What will he do?” Thomas asked.

  “Oh, Art will figure it out,” Bertram said easily. “Nothin’ we can tell him from down here. If it works, it works. That’s all. If it don’t, then old Sonny hangs there a while longer ‘til we figure out something that does.” He shrugged. “You see where that crown is hangin’ fast? That’s right over Sonny’s head. So that’s a complication. We don’t want that goin’ anywhere when the pressure comes off.”

  “And now?”

  Bertram looked up as if what was happening far above was of no particular concern. “They think the best thing is to get rid of that crown that’s hangin’ there. That’s puttin’ just hellacious force against the split. Too much to wedge against. But,” and Bertram wiped his face, “If Art cuts the crown too close to the spar, chances are good it could kick down and hit old Sonny, there. See, he’s right under it, damn near. That would put him on the unhappy side.”

  “This Art fellow…”

  “Art Mabry. He’s the best we got. Been in the timber a long time.”

  “Lemme up there, and I’ll get him,” Taylor Simpson said. Thomas glanced over at him, having forgotten the lad who had guided him to this spot. Simpson had moved the two horses to a stump a hundred yards away and then returned, standing now with his hands in his hip pockets, the grin still lighting his features. Now and then he spat a huge, well-directed stream of tobacco juice into the duff and mud at his feet.

  Bertram grunted something unintelligible and then ignored the boy.

  “We got plenty of wood here holdin’ the crown,” Art called down.

  “All right. It’s your call, Art.”

  Art worked his way around the trunk until he was directly above the trapped man. He reached out over his head and patted the crown’s trunk, then slapped it hard, as much effect as a slight breeze might have on the bedrock below them. Satisfied, he adjusted his climbing rope and then stamped each boot to reset his climbing spurs. For a moment he just rested there, then leaned back against the safety rope, his body almost horizontal. Sonny said something plaintive, and Art laughed good-naturedly.

  “If this don’t work, tell my ma I was a good boy,” Art called down.

  “If it don’t work, I’ll tell her that her boy was a clumsy son-of-a-bitch,” Bertram shouted, and more laughter drifted down.

  Art pulled up the small crosscut saw and then hung quietly for a moment, his full weight hard against his climbing belt. Thomas realized that, with the safety belt attached at the logger’s waist, the young man was holding himself with belly muscles that must have rivaled the steel core of the safety rope. The logger twisted so that he could look out along the crown’s length to the neighboring spruce tree where the limb wood was tangled. For another minute, he conversed with the third man, who appeared content to watch from the other side of the tree.

  With a deft flip of the wrist, he swung the saw up and around, sinking its teeth into the top of the crown’s bole at a spot nearly four feet out from the main spar. Even there, the crown’s trunk was close to two feet thick. No matter how gymnastic he might be, the position was awkward, and he worked quickly. Sawdust drifted out and away on the light breeze, its white mixing with the diamonds of rain to float down to the ground.

  Thomas watched through the glass, his breathing loud in his ears. It appeared that, where Art was sawing, the crown’s trunk would sag, hopelessly binding the saw, upper limbs still caught in the neighbor, but still firm on the spar. Of course, Art didn’t finish the cut. After cutting into the top of the horizontal crown’s bole for ten inches, he slipped the saw out of the top cut. He hung motionless, feet braced against the spar’s sides and one hand looped affectionately around the log above his head to give his belly and back some relief.

  Then, shifting his position around the spar, slightly away from the crown, he hefted the double-bit axe and with his torso contorted so he could hit the target, made short work of the V-groove, relieving the notch as much as he could.

  “WHOOOHOOOO!” he whooped, letting the axe’s keeper slide through his hands until it hung free. “That’ll work,” he said, obviously more to himself than anyone else. Working his way back until he was beside the horizontal crown, he positioned the saw on the bottom of the trunk, sawing rhythmically for a full minute before stopping. He left the saw in the cut and drew himself back to the spar.

  “That’s a tussle,” he said, his words again meant for no one in particular. He said something to the other logger, who immediately started down the spar. After another moment’s rest, Art repositioned himself, the saw’s soft voice resuming. Start, stop, start, stop. Progress was painfully slow, the awkward, twisted, laid-out position against the safety rope impossible to hold for long. Thomas recalled sawing firewood with his father in Connecticut, and he could imagine that this western spruce, fresh, knotty, and gummy, was actually far more difficult than cutting eastern hardwood.

  The other logger reached the ground and unclipped his belt. “Need wedges,” he said, and in a moment, he secured four heavy iron wedges to a draw line. He stood at the base of the spar, gazing up, then shook his head and walked toward Bertram.

  “He wants me off it until the crown goes,” he explained. “I told him that I needed to hang on to old Sonny, but he said he weren’t goin’ nowheres. He’s got him belted and spurred in pretty good.”

  “How much wood do you got on either side of the split?”

  The logger held his hands at least a foot apart. “Somethin’ like that. Damn thing runs right down the center of the bole. It’s got ’em good.”

  A shrill whistle jerked up a score of heads.

  “You all stand there,” Art shouted down, “and you’re gonna be wearin’ this thing.”

  “About where your horses are hitched,” Bertram instructed Thomas. Then Art set to work, the sawdust clouding below his furious sawing. Thomas watched through the lens, and could actually see the saw cut, just a faint line against the bark at that distance, begin to gape. The top cut closed, and Thomas saw Art reach up with his left hand, hugging the crown on the stump side of the cut. Twisting like a contortionist, he drove the big saw hard, and then down below the spectators heard a single sharp crack. For an instant nothing happened, and then the saw dropped out of Art’s hands as he hugged the stump with both arms. The crown popped and snapped and broke free, a giant, lazy candle of limb wood.

  Because the logger had cut it off four feet out from the spar, and because its top was so securely snagged, it swung straight down to crash into its neighbor, a giant pendulum swinging away from the spar. Its top splintered and let go with a string of reports that s
ounded like rifle shots. Broken loose and falling, the crown’s uppermost limbwood kicked back toward the spar, sweeping it like a giant broom half way down the stump. With an explosive crash, the crown settled in a storm of limbs, bark, and needles.

  Art’s cry of triumph rang across the bluff. The spar’s arc of release snapped him and the trapped Sonny Malone through forty feet of open air. With the weight of the crown removed, the remaining stump stub above the dynamite line gradually eased upward to a forty-five degree angle. And as it did so, Thomas imagined, the split closed some more. Art released his hug around the bole and swung up, his axe and saw dangling. In a moment he was sitting on the sheered top of the spar, leaning an elbow against the stub of crown as if it were the back of an easy chair. He spread out both arms in victory. Sonny Malone let out a moan loud enough to be heard down below. He didn’t sound victorious.

  Chapter Four

  “Need those wedges now,” Art Mabry said, making no effort to raise his voice. “And a number two.” Fetching things was apparently Taylor Simpson’s forte, and he reappeared in five minutes with coils of rope and lightweight block and tackle.

  For a moment he and the climber argued, the climber winning by snatching the rig out of Simpson’s hands, and chiding him with a string of profanity. “God damn ignorant…” he finished off, and deftly adjusted his load on the end of the draw line—the block and tackle, a bundle of wedges, and a heavy-handled single bit axe considerably more massive than Thomas had ever used around the family woodpile in Leister, Connecticut.

  The rigger headed heavenward again, trailing the slender draw line while Taylor Simpson, under continual but good-natured threats of creative deaths, minded that the draw line didn’t tangle.

  At the ground, the spruce was nearly seven feet in diameter, its trunk flaring out to enormous roots that Thomas imagined must surely sink to the center of the Olympic peninsula. The climber reached Art Mabry and the two of them conversed. Sonny remained quiet. Through the glass, Thomas could see that the injured man’s head was slumped against the bark, jaw slack, a strand of drool hanging from the corner of his mouth. The physician moved to the nearest sapling, a runty big-leaf maple that had been struggling to find its way to the sun. He braced the glass against the inch-diameter trunk and found the image.