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  REED! It is virtually IMPOSSIBLE for you to get to me. Treeplanters’ camp is up about 10 miles of unmarked dirt roads. IF you can find a ride (4WD only!!), the turnoff is 7/10 mi past the road to La Push. Right turn onto logging road, go 3-4 mi till it forks (after wrecked car with Fuck You in spray paint.) Bear left, then right, cross creekbed and keep going another 5 miles or so till road almost disappears, follow ruts along ridge till you get to our tents. See you soon!—Z.

  Reed sighed. “It’s impossible. See you soon. That sounds like Zan, all right.”

  Earley laid a big hand on Reed’s shoulder. The grime-crusted duct tape that bound up a gash on his knuckle was twisting loose. “How ’bout that beer?” he said.

  The Cedar Bar Lounge was so full it took time to get inside the door. The Friday night crowd was lined up three deep at the knife-scratched bar, jostling for schooners of Oly or double shots, shouting to make themselves heard above Tammy Wynette on the jukebox. Earley spotted a few guys he knew, but none who looked likely to front him a loan. If Margie was here, she might slip him a couple of bucks. Or a bourbon.

  “What are you drinking?” Reed yelled in his ear.

  “Whatever the tide brings in.”

  “Beer?”

  “That’ll do me. I’m gonna go find us a seat.” Margie might be in the back room, watching the guys shoot pool. It was worth a look, anyhow. He didn’t want to sponge too many beers off of Reed, and he needed to rustle up someplace to sleep.

  Earley threaded his way through the crowd. There were loggers in hickory shirts and faded suspenders, a handful of wives and a few unidentified hippies. The sound of them talking and laughing at once seemed insanely amplified. The Suhammish Creek clearcut where Earley was working was roadless, dead still. Whenever he paused in his splitting or sawing, he could hear birdsong from miles away, the low whoosh of the distant Hoh River. Sometimes he found himself humming and wondered what moron was making that din.

  Earley stepped through the stripped cedar columns that framed the back room. A woman was circling the pool table. Under her red flannel shirt she was wearing a man’s scoop-necked undershirt, and when she bent over her cue, he could see her breasts swell through the fabric’s thin ribs, the dark slice of heaven between them. A low-hanging lamp spilled a blaze of light over the kelly-green felt as she lined up her shots, knocking ball after ball into the pockets. Her hair was dark, coarse as a horse’s mane. She shoved it behind one ear and leaned down towards the cue ball. A small crowd had gathered to watch her play. Some of the loggers were whistling and placing bets. Earley didn’t care whether she won or lost, as long as she kept leaning over the table.

  Reed appeared at Earley’s shoulder, holding a pitcher and two glasses, beady with water. The woman was eyeing a tight-angled bank shot. She slid her cue back and forth through her hooked finger and drew it back.

  “Zan?” The cue ball went wide. She had missed her shot.

  “Jesus Christ, Reeder, you found me!” Her cue clattered onto the floor as she flung herself onto Reed’s neck, splashing beer foam all over him. “I don’t believe this. Our first night in town in a month, I’m not kidding, and you roll in. Talk about karma!”

  “How about the game?” asked the man she’d been playing with, frowning possessively.

  “Fuck it, you won,” said Zan, slinging her arm around Reed. “Is one of those glasses for me?”

  Reed’s eyes darted towards Earley.

  “You bet it is,” Earley said. “I’ll go get me another.”

  “This is my new buddy, Earley,” said Reed. Zan’s eyes traveled up Earley’s height and came to rest on his. Earley felt nakeder than he had been in the shower with Reed. Her dark eyes were appraising and frank; a slight curve of her lip let him know that she liked what she saw. Earley knew that he wasn’t a good-looking guy, with his twice-broken nose and gray tooth adding insult to injury, but he was tall and broad as a tree trunk, and most of the time, he’d found, women accepted the details. Maybe the turn-on was how much he worshiped them. Earley had made love to women of all shapes and sizes, half his age, twice his age, and he could honestly say he had never been inside a pussy he hadn’t enjoyed.

  “Zan?” he said stupidly.

  “Alexandra, but who has the time? Good to meet you.”

  “I’ll go get a glass,” said Earley. He was hitting the conversational highlights, all right, really rolling them out. All his life he’d reacted to chemical lust with a thickened tongue. He could practically feel his IQ dropping as he stared at Zan’s bristling eyebrows, the way her lips glistened. This woman was fierce. She could eat you for breakfast, or thought she could, anyway.

  Reed had a chewed-up-and-spat kind of look on his face, like he’d already been through the mill and was hoping for more. It was Earley’s job, right now, to get the hell out of their way. He should head for the bar like a good boy and get himself sidetracked, let Reed have his shot. But his feet wouldn’t move. The spikes of his caulk boots were anchored, set into the floor, as if he were standing atop a downed trunk that was slick with rain, treacherous.

  “So you’re a shake-rat?” Zan picked up her near-empty beer glass, staring at Earley. They’d moved to a booth in the back corner. Zan and Reed squeezed together on one bench and Earley hunched onto the other. Zan’s treeplanter friends stood across the room, laughing and goofing around at the pool tables.

  “Stumpfucker, yeah.”

  “Hard work.” She set down her glass and Reed filled it.

  “It’s work,” Earley said. “Not so different from tree-planting, except for the chainsaw. Your basic bend over and kill yourself.”

  “What’s a shake-rat?” asked Reed.

  “I cut up cedar salvage for roof shakes,” said Earley, squirming a bit under Zan’s intense gaze. He’d felt out of place and self-conscious when she and Reed traded news without filling him in, as if they were speaking a dense private code. Now that she’d shifted the spotlight to him, he wished they would talk about Berkeley again. I’m out of practice with people, he thought, thinking again of the hush that surrounded him when he stopped working and gazed down the mountain, when he lit an oil lamp and reheated something for dinner, eating it right from the skillet.

  “You work by yourself?”

  “Had a partner cut out on me, couple weeks back.” Earley picked up his beer and took a long slug. Dean had quit back in December; he wondered why he’d felt the urge to downplay the amount of time he’d been living alone. It would take him a couple more drinks to feel back in the world.

  “Do you think I could do it?” asked Reed. “Do you need any special—”

  Zan interrupted him. “Look at his hands.” She pointed at Earley’s black nails and split knuckles.

  “I’m not playing anyway.”

  “Then you’re a jerk,” said Zan, dropping her arm from Reed’s shoulders and grabbing her beer mug. “Reed is a fucking amazing musician,” she told Earley. “But he’d rather piss it away.”

  “Zan, if I was amazing, or even half good—”

  ”You are,” said Zan angrily, slamming her beer on the table. She looked at her treeplanter friends. “It’s our crew leader’s birthday today, that guy with the beard and bandanna. He just turned thirty. All day he’s been walking around in a daze with his tree-bags strapped onto his ass, saying over and over, ‘I’m thirty years old, and I’m climbing up hills in the rain poking holes in the ground.’ You want to be him?”

  Earley was twenty-nine. He could relate. All three of his sisters had families already, and even his kid brother owned a few acres he’d bought with his disability checks from the navy. Earley’s net worth was a beat-up old schoolbus, a truck with one door and a six-year-old chainsaw—a Husqy, he told himself, top of the line, but still.

  “Yeah,” Reed was saying, “maybe I do. Maybe I’d like to be planting a forest, or giving some family a new roof, or something . Something that isn’t just me being me.”

  “You’re a jerk, Reed.” Zan picked up his
hand, pressed her lips to his fingertips, then moved downwards to nuzzle his palm. Reed cradled her cheek, and her eyes closed. “I missed you,” she murmured. Earley watched as Reed kissed her hair, breathing the scent of her, drinking it in with his lips. They’d forgotten that Earley was there. This was his exit for sure. He was horny enough without watching them kiss.

  Earley unfolded himself from the bench, but Zan’s other hand caught his sleeve. “You don’t have to go,” she said.

  Earley looked down at the two of them, trying to shoot Reed a glance that meant, I’m clearing out, bud, don’t worry. “Taking a leak,” he said. “Too full of beer.”

  Zan’s gaze didn’t leave him. “Come back,” she said.

  Earley looked at himself in the mirror above the cracked sink. This wasn’t a thing a guy did; there were rules of behavior here. Margie was different. She’d married an asshole who slept around plenty, would probably screw a damn gas tank if you left the cap off. Earley was poaching, he knew, but he figured her husband deserved it. Reed was a buddy.

  Or was he? Earley had met the guy, what, maybe two or three hours ago. They’d smoked some weed, had a couple of laughs, that was all. They were strangers. Reed had told Earley himself that he and Zan weren’t really together, least not anymore. And damn it, the way she looked at him.

  Earley was hedging, he knew it. The right thing to do was to walk out the door of the men’s room and just keep on going. He turned off the water tap, wiping his hands on his shirttail. A Quileute Indian built like a hot water heater walked through the door, tilting his chin up in greeting. That’s how men were with each other. They gave ground, they maintained their dignity. Leave now, Earley said to himself. If you don’t, there’ll be trouble.

  He walked out of the men’s room, his head held high, swinging the door back so forcefully that it slammed into the women’s room door as Zan came out, smiling. “Don’t know your own strength,” she said, eyeing Earley’s broad shoulders. He followed her back to the booth, watching the way her ass moved in her jeans, how the men she passed swiveled and how she ignored them. It was like watching the wake of a ship.

  Zan slid back in next to Reed. “Did you find my map in the laundromat?”

  Reed nodded. “I would have walked if I had to.”

  “Good thing Earley rescued you.” There was that smile again, mocking, inviting. “Treeplanting camp is a hell of a hike.”

  “How’d you wind up there?”

  Zan shrugged. “I was heading for Vancouver Island. Met a guy from Australia who’d just joined the crew.” Reed’s face went taut. Her lips curved as she answered the question before he could ask it. “He quit the first week. Couldn’t hack it. It’s backbreaking, boring, hard work.”

  Earley wondered what kind of a moron would pass up a chance at Zan because planting a couple of trees was too hard. “But you stayed on?”

  “I liked it.”

  “Why?” Earley asked her.

  Zan turned to look at him. Her eyes were unreadable, dark as molasses. “It’s making me strong,” she said. “Why do you work in the woods?”

  “I’m good at it,” Earley said. He leaned backwards and folded his forearms across his chest.

  Reed drained his beer. Earley noticed the group of treeplanters was starting to layer on jackets and raingear. A girl with a hip-length honey-blonde braid slouched over to Zan. “The crummy’s about to take off. Are you coming?”

  “Give me a minute.” The blonde girl nodded, looking at Earley’s arms. She flashed him a tentative smile, then rejoined the bandanna-wrapped crew chief, the one who’d turned thirty. Zan turned towards Reed, draping a hand on his shoulder. “So where are you guys gonna stay tonight?”

  Reed and Earley looked at each other. “Got me,” said Earley.

  “We haven’t, ah, gotten that far,” said Reed. “How about you?”

  Zan traced her hand up the side of his neck. “I’ve got a leaky tent up in the woods. With a roommate.”

  “I’ve got a bus in the woods,” said Earley.

  “I’ve got a dorm room in Berkeley,” said Reed.

  Earley shook his head, grinning. “Well, this is a sorry-ass state of affairs. I could drive y’all twenty miles back to my bus, but it’s none too deluxe up there.”

  “Got to be better than treeplanters’ camp.”

  Reed looked at Zan, then at Earley. “Is there a motel in town?”

  “Sort of. Guy I know works the front desk. If he’s not feeling surly he might find us some kind of rack. He’s stood me to plenty of Friday nights.”

  Zan’s lips crinkled into a smile, “Yeah, I bet.” Earley wasn’t imagining it. She was flirting with him, with her fingers entwined in Reed’s hair. He tried to envision the sleeping arrangement. Whatever it was, he was on for the ride. He tossed the keys to his truck onto the tabletop, next to the empty beer pitcher.

  Zan twisted around towards the crew chief. “Yo, birthday boy, I’m going to stay with my friends tonight.” She waved at him, blithely ignoring his frown. Then she turned back, drained her beer glass and looked from Earley to Reed. “Ready?”

  They stood at the same moment. Reed tossed a handful of change on the tabletop next to the pitcher. Earley couldn’t imagine why someone would leave a tip when nobody had served him. He spotted a couple of dimes in the mix. You son of a bitch, he thought, staring down at the coins. You better have just picked those up at the bar. He looked over at Reed, who was pulling Zan tight to his hipbones, his hands roaming over the seat of her jeans.

  “You bet,” said Reed. “Ready for anything.”

  THREE

  Scoter Gillies was practically prone in his swivel chair, watching a snow-crackled mini TV. He heard the door open but didn’t look up. Earley leaned over the counter and pinged seven times on the customer service bell. Scoter twisted his head around. “Earley, you fuck.”

  Earley raised his chin towards the TV. “That the one about killer piranhas?”

  “I’m not gonna lend you a cent till you bring back my drill.”

  “It’s up at the bus. But I got some collateral.” He laid one of Reed’s tightly rolled joints on the guest register. Scoter’s eyebrows went up. “It’s serious weed. California Hawaiian.”

  Earley set down a second joint next to the first one, then glanced at the key rack. There were still a few numbered fobs hanging down from their hooks. “Could you spare me a couple of honeymoon suites for the evening?”

  “A couple? How many wives have you got out there?”

  “Second room’s for my friend from the grassfields of Maui. He’s here with a lady.” Scoter swung his desk chair around, grabbing one room key. He threw it at Earley. “Tell your friend and his lady I take cash or charge.”

  Earley slammed the aluminum door and went to the idling pickup. The VACANCY sign spilled a wet slick of red through the parking lot’s puddles. He opened the door and held up his room key. “Best I could do. You guys take it. I’ll sleep in the truck.”

  “That’s not fair. He’s your friend.”

  “It’s your weed. And there’s two of you.”

  Zan said, “I think we’ll all fit.” Reed stared at her. She shrugged. “I’ve slept in an army cot under a pup tent the last couple months. It’s got two double beds, right?”

  “The hell with the beds,” Earley said. “It’s the shower I’m dreaming of.”

  The hot water splashed in the fake marble sink, clouding the mirror with steam. Earley was shaving his neck. He had worked up a lather with Cameo soap, and was carefully mowing a half inch of fuzz from the base of his throat. He bent his knees lower to look in a mirror positioned for somebody half a foot shorter. His Adam’s apple stuck out like a growth, rising and falling with every gulp. He could hear Zan and Reed through the door. They’d turned on the TV for some semblance of privacy; Earley heard an ominous soundtrack and wondered if it was the same killer fish movie Scoter was watching. Reed let out a moan as Zan’s voice rose and fell in a flirtatious lilt.
r />   Earley pictured her peeling that undershirt over her breasts, how they’d rise with her arms, nipples jutting like fingers. He heard the bed creak. Were they already at it? Did Zan have her legs wrapped around his bare back, was she riding on top? He imagined the wetness inside her, the gasp with each thrust, how she’d draw a man deeper and deeper. What must that feel like, he wondered, to pull someone inside your body, surround him? He was getting a boner. Forget the damn beard, he could clean it up later. He stripped off his longjohns and pulled back the blue shower curtain. Inside the tub was a plumber’s kit. Both of the faucets were off.

  “Shit!” Earley kicked the tub so hard his toes hurt. He grabbed at the curtain and ripped it off, shredding its grommets. He pounded the wall.

  “. . . You okay in there?” Reed’s voice sounded strained. Earley pictured him stuck in mid-hump, straddling Zan as he turned towards the bathroom wall, wondering what kind of gonzo had picked him up hitching.

  “Gonna kill that sumbitch. Gonna murder his scrawny white ass,” Earley sputtered. He scooped up his blue jeans and jerked them on angrily, stepping back into his unlaced caulks. Hell with socks. Hell with his wool shirt. He grabbed his stained T-shirt in one hand and pushed through the bathroom door.

  Zan and Reed sat side by side on the edge of the bed. They weren’t even undressed yet. College kids. He would have had her flat out by now. Reed must be one of those talkers. Earley clomped through the bedroom in loose caulks and dangling suspenders. “Be back sooner or later,” he mumbled, aware of Zan’s eyes on his torso, the damp froth of Cameo sliding from throat to bare chest. “I got a shower to take.”

  Scoter stuck his hand into a big bag of Fritos. “You get what you pay for.” He stared at the screen, where the Amazon River was roiling. “These fish are intense. Check the jaw on that thing.”

  “You got three other rooms. Half an hour,” Earley begged.

  “No can do, man. It’s bar night. God only knows what’s about to roll in here. I gave you the room I knew wouldn’t be renting.”