Iron Buddhas 14

 - 14 -

"I DUNNO, Stef, might wanta sit this one out," Amy is saying. "They sprayed it heavy with 2,4-D."
    "What's that?" asks Steffi.
    Amy does a double take. "Girl, you are somewhat wise in the ways of the woods but naive as to the ways of the wood products industry."
    Chuck beckons to Steffi. She and Amy follow him to the edge of the landing. He points at the nearest alder trees outside the burn area, which are dying, but don't look scorched. "See the tips of these twigs, they go all curly like a pig's tail."
    It does look a little odd. "Mmm, yeah. What's up with that?"
    "2,4-D kind of mimics growth hormones. It's making the cells that divide the most -- the one's in the growing tips of the branches -- expand erratically, shoving the twig around on its own axis in a spiral." He points at the trunks. "Soon these trees will die, turn punky, shatter and collapse, because most of their cambium cell walls will have burst. We're hearing from the Farmworkers Union in California that this stuff affects people, too."
    "So I'm, like, not going down there," concludes Amy, with a palm upturned. "Might wanna have a baby some day."
    Juneen walks over. "Me neither. Last time I worked in this stuff, my period was two weeks off."
    "Well, nobody's going to make you," says Chuck, taking off his hard hat and raking his hair with a grubby hand. "But we do have a contract, and if only the guys go, we're one short today and the fazoos will call it off and ding us for non-compliance."
    Steffi's funds have been depleted by her down time and repair work; she's anxious not to just haunt camp, which is particularly muddy and miserable this week. "I'll go."
    Amy kind of looks daggers at her, but doesn't comment.
    It's a strange place to work. The rangers claim the chemicals were all burnt up in the unit burn, but the air smells faintly diesel-ish and Steffi keeps trying to not breathe. She stops and dampens a bandanna and ties it round her face, as she's been known to do on fires at Timberland, but she still feels light-headed. She wonders if it's a placebo effect.
    Too, there's nothing to grab on to. All the slash that survived the burn is so brittle she can't haul herself around the steep hillside by it as she's used to doing. Steffi can see other treeplanters having the same trouble. A Magruder loses his balance, grabs a branch to stop his fall; it disintegrates and over he goes. A few moments later, Lon repeats the performance. As he tumbles into a draw, Little Butch snaps his picture, while barely keeping his own footing.
    Steffi finds a puddle and spots a thin sheen on the water. She looks closely. The sheen can be one of two things -- broken-up fractals of color, almost crystalline, which would be bacteria, or spirals and curves of color, which would be oil. It's definitely spirals and curves.
    "Hey, inspector, what's with the oily puddles?"
    The white hat, leaning on his shovel, grins. "S'just bacteria."
    S'just bacteria, hippie. Suck it up and dig.

:::

In Steffi's Technicolor dreams that night, a young man stands by her bed. He looks a lot like her, except he has a black beard.
    "How's it going?" she asks him.
    "Not too good. I'm 'developmentally delayed.'"
    "What's that?"
    He goes over, taps a dark glass window in a cinder-block wall. "Ask the guy with the notepad; he's in there listening to us. Writing down my future. 'Special ed', no driving, won't be able to work. I can't even read clocks."
    "I -- I'm sorry." Who is this guy?
    "Could be worse. At least I'm getting them back by taking all the SSI."
    Steffi wakes up in a cold sweat. Belatedly protective, she covers her belly with her hands.

:::


While she's lying there, staring at what's left of the dream, she notices the ceiling close above her head has taken on a rosy glow. There's noise, too: pops and snaps like someone dancing on that fragile slash, or like a really big bonfire.
    The glow flickers. Okay, bonfire. She scrabbles over to the edge of the loft, looks down through the window. Yoder runs past it with a five-gallon bucket. He's glowing too.
    There's shouting.
    Fire! In camp. She doesn't believe it.
    Chuck throws open her back door. "Fire!"
    She believes it.
    In her finest long johns, Steffi adds Little Bird's white bucket to the brigade. What's burning is a small travel trailer. Flames are coming out all the windows and, before long, as camp is not near running water, the roof as well.
    The main worry is the propane tanks, which are mounted on the trailer's tongue. Their valves have been cranked shut by a gloved hand, but where they are it's already too hot to try and dismount them.
    All the extinguishers have been emptied. Burt has been pumping water from the camp's fifty-five gallon barrel, but it's taking awhile to fill each bucket. Several puddles in the beat-up gravel road have already been bailed onto the flames, mud and all.
    They're out of things they can try, and backing away from the mess. Steffi turns around and finds Yoder gaping at the rapidly diminishing trailer.
    "Sometimes ya gotta punt," Chuck says to them.
    "Whose is that anyway?" asks Steffi. "I haven't seen it before."
    "Belonged to the Magruders," says Yoder. "But the new guy rented it from them. 'Don't let him use the propane heater, they said."
    "New guy?"
    Yoder points out a young man standing not too far away. Nobody's standing with him. He's medium height, just a little portly (tree planting will take that off if he sticks with it, she thinks), black curly hair, a thin mustache. Steffi's thinking he doesn't look contrite enough for the trailer.
    Chuck calls him over. "Dale; Yoder, Stef."
    Dale offers his hand. Sweaty palm; maybe he is contrite.
    Chuck catches Steffi's eye. "Seeing as we don't have the yurt on this job, Stef, y'think y'could put Dale up for awhile?"
    She's not r-e-e-e-al into it, but nods.
    Dale has saved his backpack full of to-be-laundered but not much else. By the fading firelight, Steffi leads him through the stinking pall of smoke to the housetruck's stoop. Huh, Ritz Hotel after all.
    "You can have the blanket; anywhere down here. I'm up there."
    "Up there looks comfy," he says hopefully.
    "You can have the blanket; anywhere down here. I'm up there."
    "O-o-kay, I gotcha."
    "'Night."
    "Sure, 'night." He settles on the locker across from the Airtight and fishes in his breast pocket.
    "Oh, and there are house rules. No smoking indoors."
    Dale stops fishing. She half expects some grumbling but there's none forthcoming.
    Home sweet sleeping bag. After Steffi closes her eyes, Dale gets chatty.
    "Anybody rents ya a trailer, they oughta at least fix the heater first, y'd think."
    Steffi's not sure she has anything to say to this.
    Dale drags some soiled clothing from his pack and wads it up for a pillow. "Where ya from?"
    Where is she from? Steffi does have an Oregon driver's license; for three years now. It bears the address of an apartment in Eugene where she crashed awhile; she's not sure she even remembers whose it was.
    "Greenwood."
    "No kiddin'? But I mean, before that."
    "Oh. Georgia."
    "Oh, wow. Me, I'm a native."
    He says it in lowercase, and Steffi understands him. She's heard people use the term a lot. It means born in Oregon. Capital "Native" is something else. "So, Eugene?"
    "Naah, Klamath Falls I think."
    "You ... think?"
    "I'm adopted."
    "Um. Sleep now?"
    "Oh, uh, sure. Sorry, I talk a lot."
    Well, at least he recognizes it.

:::

In the early going, Steffi finds Dale a less than ideal roommate, and frequently has to re-establish boundaries and ownership, but, she reasons, there's an extra body in the crummy at a time when two crews are having trouble making up a day's one-crew roster. Dale gets up, sort of ready and sort of willing, day after day. That, even his hostess has to acknowledge, counts for a lot.
    Some people take to tree planting naturally; some do not. The crew watches Dale's lessons and, discreetly, shake their heads. He has trouble finding the line or getting his trees "right-side-up" as the old saw goes. He blurts out things to the suspectors they shouldn't hear, and his contributions at crew meetings are less than edifying.
    But he's a good cook. That, his fellow crew members admit, also counts for a lot.
    On the fourth night, Dale fixes dinner for the landlady. She's impressed. The crew authorizes him to make a town run with the "sixpack" to buy supplies, and soon he has everyone looking forward to supper every night.
    The work is slow, many of the units are a long crummy ride from camp, and the suppers are often prepared by lamplight.
    Comes a day, the crew is so tired no one wants to even try to leave the crummy.
    They all sit there, some still in wet caulks. Dale rolls a big one, lights it, passes it around. Steffi, as usual, waves it off with thanks. She thinks maybe she'd like a little air. With an effort she heaves herself up, staggers to the front door, cranks it open, and steps down to the wet sun-burnished grass. Pretty. Takes three steps toward Ritzy, and sinks down to rest against a stump.
    The sky has cleared at last, and there's a pre-sunset cloud show in progress: shades of rose, pink, mauve. Other planters drag themselves out, discover the cloud show, and settle into an ever-growing heap around the stump. Dale is the last out, carrying what's left of the damp roach gripped in a long pair of tweezers. He's watching his own cloud show, by the look of him, and he drifts off to Ritzy and falls into his own bed, a pallet of foam rubber and blankets he's acquired since Fire Night. Steffi can see his boots sticking out of his nest, by the open back door. Looks like he is asleep already.
    Some of those around her are napping also. Steffi just watches the sky.
    She's admiring purple and crimson streaks, in layers above the nearby ridge tops, when she spots Dale coming down Ritzy's steps with his boots, hard hat, and lunch box. These he thumps down, with a flourish, on a step; bodies stir all around Steffi.
    "So, y'all want pancakes?" Dale folds his arms and surveys the crew, beaming good nature.
    Eyes meet eyes round the circle. Heads nod imperceptibly.
    "Oh, uh, yeah, Dale, we want pancakes, you betcha," the crew choruses. "You betcha."
    "Comin' right up." Dale marches back into the Ritz; presently smoke issues from the chimney, and soon the heavenly smell of buttermilk pancakes draws the full attention of everyone present.
    It's a good dinner, served outdoors. No one goes lacking for butter or syrup, and there's enough jam for the jam fanciers. Dale pops in to the kitchen to fulfill a last request, then goes over to his boots, hard hat and lunch box, and heads over to the crummy.
    Halfway there, it dawns on him that it's getting darker, not lighter. Slowly he turns and looks at the sky. A star has come out. His gaze drops to the onlookers, all still sitting around the stump with their plates on their laps and their forks poised in the air.
    "It's not morning, is it?" he asks.
    Everyone cracks up. The Magruders, who have been a bit formal with Dale up to this point, are laughing the hardest. Both of them stretch themselves out on the ground and pound it with their fists, wheezing themselves breathless.
    It takes him a few moments, but Dale pulls himself together and cracks a lopsided grin. "Well, okay, y'all hadda good dinner, anyhows."



(To be continued)

Iron Buddhas 13

 - 13 -

AFTER THE "runaway crew member" contract, Steffi takes a little time off to get Ritzy and Little Bird up and running. She's not a great mechanic, but with the aid of tools from the crummy and manuals from the Public Library, she makes a little headway on the starter motor. Ritzy is parked at Central, by the tracks. This doesn't seem to disturb anyone, maybe because it's close to the jail, which is next door to Central, and folks just don't hang around outside those sad, brightly illuminated walls.
    By day, Steffi tinkers with the starter motor under the skylight in Ritzy's "living" room; by night she reads, tucked into her sleeping bag, gloves on: it's a cold winter and the police are okay until you start building fires in your stove. For a reading lamp, she has the jail's sodium vapor lamps.
    Once Ritzy's got a new starter motor throw-out spring in place and the motor re-installed and tested, Steffi turns to Little Bird's problems. A new headlamp is easy; the forks less so. She learns disassembly, puzzles over the forks awhile, then grabs them and a hydraulic jack and heads for the smallest gap she can find between two concrete-walled buildings.
    It's late when she gets back to the Ritz. Little Bird's gonna be okay, but assembly should wait until morning. Or maybe even later; Face crew and the Wildcats are glomming in Six Rivers and she's running a week behind. She'll drive straight there tomorrow.
    Packs herself into the sleeping bag in the "bedroom" above the tall blue truck cab.
    Close above her head is the ceiling; cedar one-by-fours. It's a little like sleeping in a tent. She reaches up to touch the ceiling. "Roads go ever on and on ... "

:::

The road she's remembering came down from the hot Georgia Piedmont into the flats and curved along the lake shore to a small boathouse. This building was just big enough to hold a retired gentleman and a cash box; outside stood a soft drink machine, a pay phone, and a mercury-vapor lamp.
    Thousands of white moths lay, slaughtered, beneath the lamp.
    Alongside the building, at water's edge, stood a long-legged shed, under which lay about fifteen wooden "jon" boats in assorted shades of deep green, with hand-painted yellow numbers. A sign on the shed read:

DAY USE ONLY. FISHING ONLY.
$2 A DAY.

    Stephanie pulled up beside the heap of dead moths. The old gentleman, of impressive girth and gruff appearance, tended to intimidate newcomers but was kind to his regulars. He huffed up from his chair, took one and a half steps, and tilted himself against the doorjamb.
    Stephanie leaned out the window of her dad's station wagon. "Hey, Mr. Johnson. How have you been, sir?"
    "Oh, hey, Little Bit. Ye've growed up! Where's your old man? He arright?"
    "Yessir, he's well. I'm here on my lonesome, sir." Steffi didn't want to dwell on her newness in this adult world, but the gent sensed both her reticence and her pride: a first-timer away from the parental eye. An important occasion, to be marked by not commenting.
    "You here f'r'a boat?"
    "Yessir, and may I ask, I'd like to take Number Eleven, here, over to the point, camp out there for a few days?"
    He looked across the water. "Y'dad knows you're here, right?"
    "Yessir, and here's our phone number, sir."
    "Okay, child, you'c'n do that. Things are slow, that's a fact. Y'kin leave y'car here. There's this fire ring over there, use that, n'a good flat spot, but don't wander off. Bad swamp back there. Check in w'me inna mornins'."
    "Yessir."
    "Six bucks."
    "Yessir."
    "Oars or paddle?"
    "Paddle, thank you, sir."
    Number Eleven was a high-sided three-seater, sixteen feet long, square on each end, with a chunk of cinder block for an anchor. It was not much favored by the fishermen, because it tended to catch too much wind; but Stephanie liked it for that; she could get onto the lee end of the lake and sail downwind, putting the paddle in the water behind her to "scull" by.
    She rowed over to the point, on the east end of the lake, good for camping because it was to windward and would not have a lot of mosquitoes, and good for her purpose because there was no road access.
    She could put up the tent, stretch out, nap, eat, read, go off and paddle around, eat some more, sleep, build a fire, stare into the fire, hum, chase snakes. Read, sleep. Thoroughly explore the forbidden swamp. Alone.
    Her own schedule. For, hmm, only the second time in her life. And this time with permission. She lay in the sun, a turtle on a log, soaking up the future.
    Come the last night, she left her kerosene lantern on the landing, so as to find her way back, and rowed out to the middle of the lake under a stunningly red sky. Blankets, dinner. Prepared to stay as long as the stars wanted company. Dropped anchor in thirty-three feet of dark green water.
    Stephanie ate her beans, read till it was dark, which was quite late out away from the trees, looked about, made her bed in the bottom of Number Eleven, put her feet up on the seat, and watched stars and things come out.
    Vega overhead. Jupiter to the south there. Bats flying low over the water, a moment of wings thrumming by in search of whatever moths had been missed by the mercury vapor lamp.
    Along about two in the morning, she came to. Felt distinctly Not Alone. She lay still, wondering if maybe a cottonmouth had got in with her, but those have a distinctive smell, a bit like watermelon. And rattlesnakes waft a bit of cucumber. There was a smell, all right, but it was like a wet rug.
    Mammal, then.
    Stephanie eased up in the dark and peered over the gunnel.
    A beaver, looking for all the world as long as the boat, lay on the still surface, eyes closed. Shiny in the starlight. Dead? She reached out a finger. Poked the wet fur.
    Water geysered up and descended on Number Eleven, the blankets, and Stephanie, as the startled beaver slapped tail and sounded. She screamed. Maybe twice, for good measure. Her heart raced for a good while, and she was fairly cold from the drenching by the time she got round to raising the anchor.
    Could the beaver have been sleeping out there, hundreds of yards from the shore? Never heard of a beaver doing that. Then again, the beaver had never heard of a girl doing that, either. They had both had a pretty rough moment there. She set to with the paddle.
    In the morning, she packed up, paddled around for three more hours, then pulled into the boathouse. Mr. Johnson took possession of Number Eleven. "So, d'ja catch anything?"
    With her Baptist upbringing Stephanie felt compelled not to lie outright. "There ... there was a really big one, but it got away."

:::

Steffi must have dozed off, remembering the lake. It's late night or pre-dawn, she's not sure. She's suddenly uneasy. Did she remember to lock the door?
    And what's woken her up?
    She crunches up on her elbows and looks in the direction of the back doors. They're wide open, and there's a man in silhouette, with the lid of one of the lockers open, rummaging in the interior.
    Not a good thing to have happening; that's the locker with, among other things, an axe and a machete in it. She'd better act fast.
    Shrugging her shoulders and arms out of the sleeping bag, she reaches under her pillow for her .38. Taking the grips in both hands, with her trigger finger indexed along the frame, she aims it at the shadow. "Get out of there."
    The man jumps and the lid bangs shut. He turns and steps toward Steffi.
    "Heh," he says. "You wouldn't." What a voice! Smokes too much.
She locks back the hammer with her left thumb and puts her finger on the trigger. "I do flinch. But I don't miss the ten ring very often."
    Apparently he's thinking it over. After a long moment, the guy shrugs and turns away, his rumpled trench coat rustling. He eases himself down to the ground through the open doors, and saunters away.
    Some poor homeless guy, sure. But there's a line not to be crossed.
    Steffi's shaking now, badly, but she's got things to do. She eases the hammer down, puts her beloved Model Ten in its holster, gets up, locks the doors, slides into her pants and house shoes, unlocks the doors, climbs down, locks the doors again from the outside, runs round to the cab, fires up Ritzy, and drives to another part of town. There she parks, runs back round to the 'house,' secures every loose thing for a bumpier drive, runs back to the cab, then heads for the hills.
    Not until she reaches open country does she start crying.


(To be continued)