Publisher’s Note: With today’s official release of The Bee-Loud Glade, we thought it would be enlightening to ask author Steve Himmer to provide an outtake from his debut novel. The following excerpt did not make the book’s final cut for reasons that Steve outlines below, and aptly illustrates the critical decisions and revisions that many novelists make throughout the creative process.

Author’s Note: In the final version of The Bee-Loud Glade, the protagonist Finch is delivered to his new life as a hermit by replying to what he thinks is a piece of spam. In this alternate version, Finch instead discovers the job opening through a classified ad in the newspaper, while venturing out of his house after a long time indoors.

I enjoy this scene at the grocery store, with Finch out in the world, and was sorry to cut it. This quiet moment—with Finch in public yet totally absorbed in his own bubble—gives a suggestion of who he will become.

In the revised, final version, Finch is more desperate, perhaps, and more dependent on technology as his connection to the world, so it’s a different kind of isolation. I worried that if he was able to head out to the store so easily, at ease in the world, there was less reason for Mr. Crane’s offer to appeal to him later. And the idea of spam appealed to me, too, because it’s so ambiguous—a classified ad is obviously in every copy of the newspaper, but an email may be “genuine” spam or it may be an email sent just to Finch and only disguised as spam. The creepiness of that, and the Schrödinger’s cat-ish ambiguity of the technology, felt important to where the story was headed.

The Bee-Loud Glade: A Novel
by Steve Himmer
Fiction, Trade Paperback Original
ISBN 978-0-9845105-8-0
6 x 9 in / 224 pages
Publication Date: April 4, 2011

Buy the Book

Alternate Scene

One morning among identical mornings—a consistency I’d come to cherish—I wondered how it might taste to eat deviled egg yolks in the seeded trough of a cucumber. I woke with that image bright and clear in my head, so maybe it came from a dream. Such an insignificant impulse, and the combination turned out to be less than delicious, but that ridiculous gustatory desire changed my life. There were no cucumbers or eggs hiding in my apartment so I went out for the first time in weeks. I didn’t bother locking the door because if the eviction crew came they’d have their own keys (though why they hadn’t used them before, who can say) and if anyone else came and forced their way in they’d only take the appliances I wasn’t using. Also, I didn’t know where my keys were.

Halfway to the market at the end of the block, on a quest for cucumbers and eggs, I realized my T-shirt was both backwards and inside-out. I suspected it was the same undershirt I’d been wearing the day I was fired, and that I’d spilled on it at some point and turned it around to hide the stain from myself for some reason. The smell of my body must have built gradually enough for my nose to adjust and not notice, because the people I passed made sour faces and pinched their nostrils shut and one woman pushing a stroller while jogging stopped short on the sidewalk and gagged. I pictured myself through their eyes and noses, rancid and ragged and crawled out of a cave—I really did think that, “crawled out of a cave,” as unlikely as it may seem. Out in the world, in the sunlight, I felt the time that had passed in my darkened apartment and the state I’d slipped into in isolation. I was reminded that I have a body, one that can be seen by other people, one that was visibly not working during work hours and clearly hadn’t been for some time.

The store’s cucumbers looked a bit spotty, but during my years at Second Nature I’d gotten used to real plants and produce looking less-than-perfect beside our hyperefficient replacements. I chose two waxy cukes straight enough to be hollowed into slick green canoes, then found myself a carton of eggs, and on impulse while waiting in line I grabbed a newspaper out of the rack thinking I’d catch up with the world since I was already out in it.

I bought a big coffee from a counter in the market then sat outside on a bench before heading home to my culinary inquiries. I grew so engrossed in watching cream swirl that my coffee went cold before I’d taken a sip, but I drank it anyway because the day had grown hot and it was even more refreshing that way. I scanned the news and the sports, but most of the stories seemed to be adding to stories from previous days and didn’t make sense without already knowing what they were about. Trying to dig out the crossword puzzle—it hadn’t occurred to me yet that I had no pencil or pen—and juggling the paper along with my coffee, I dropped the classified section and it floated to the ground in slow motion (I swear!), fluttering like a… well, like a prayer flag again.

The sheets landed flat on the grass, spread out wide, and as I reached down to retrieve them a particular listing caught my attention. It wasn’t any more visually exciting than the items around it, it didn’t have a fancy border or extra large type, but it grabbed my eye like a magnet reels in iron filings:

WANTED Quiet, contemplative outdoors enthusiast for full time employment — daydreamers and introverts encouraged to apply. Competitive salary and excellent benefits. Lodging and all meals provided.

I read the listing again and again, folded the paper, put it down, picked it up, unfolded it, and made sure the ad still said what I’d seen. I wondered if it was a medical experiment of some kind, like the ones I used to see advertised on the bus ride to work. I wondered, too, if it was joke, or a con-artist fishing for victims, even a cult. But although I allowed the skeptical part of my mind to run through all the worst cases it could, I knew right away the ad was for real. I felt as if it had been written, had been waiting, for me and me only to open the paper and find it.

A more cynical person, a rational person, would assume such an offer too good to be true. To me, it seemed too good not to be true—who but a dreamer would devise such a wonderful dream? And who but a dreamer would be willing to admit they had done so by announcing it to the readers of a major newspaper? But providence was in my hands, and I believed in the ad and the local phone number it offered.

I walked home in more of a hurry than I’d felt for months, imagining myself at the center of glorious ventures, watching forests for fire from high in a tower or accompanying explorers to the world’s farthest places. All I needed to do was call. But when I reached the phone in my kitchen, I couldn’t dial. I spent the rest of the day with the paper before me, folded and torn so only that one listing showed. The light changed as afternoon passed, and long shadows crawled across my apartment while I stood paralyzed. My former coworkers at Second Nature were logging off for the day when at last I summoned the courage to lift the receiver up to my ear, only to be reminded my service was cut—the harsh hum of dead wires roused me from my coma, and jolted me back into action. So I scrounged up some change from around my apartment and walked back to the payphone by the market.

After four rings a man answered and gave me an address in a part of the city I’d seldom seen—high hills and higher houses upon them, mostly new money and enough of it to conjure glowing green yards and bright swimming pools from what had been rough, barren ground a few decades before. Some of the bigwigs at Second Nature lived there, but none had invited me over.

The man on the phone asked me to come the next morning at nine o’clock sharp (he actually used the word “sharp”) then excused himself and hung up.

I smoothed my one suit as much as I could with a cast-iron pan warmed up in the oven (using the burner is faster, but leaves black marks on the cloth). I briefly considered cutting my hair, but since I’d never cut it myself before and had come to like the look of it longer, I only brushed it and clipped at the parts of my beard that stuck out more than the whiskers around them.

I did a passable job cleaning up, but had I known what Mr Crane wanted in an employee, had I known what this job would entail, I might have saved myself all that effort not to mention a painful burn on my thumb. Had I cut my hair neatly or shaved off my beard, had my suit been clean and well-pressed, it might have cost me the job.

Lead photo source: Ossian’s Cave

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steve Himmer teaches at Emerson College in Boston, where he earned his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing and is on the faculty of the First Year Writing Program. His stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Hobart, The Los Angeles Review, Night Train, Pindeldyboz, PANK, Emprise Review, and Everyday Genius. He also is a frequent blogger on writing and teaching, and edits Necessary Fiction, a webjournal from So New Publishing, a press based in Eugene, Oregon. His debut novel, The Bee-Loud Glade, is currently available for sale here, on Indiebound, and wherever eclectic books are sold.

The driver gets out and clangs the rusty door shut. He jets two gray streams through his nose, drops his cigarette onto my drive and grinds it out beneath his work boot. Then he does something I don’t expect: he bends over and picks the butt up, tearing away the nub of burnt tobacco before shoving the filter into the back pocket of his dirty jeans. He starts up my walk, disappearing from the window frame. I hear the doorbell but don’t move. Instead I watch the kid he’s got with him rummage through the bed of the truck, lifting out gas cans and ropes and chainsaws.

Last week’s storm brought the wet-heavy snow too early, weighing down the half-turned leaves, snapping limbs across the state. Now, after yesterday’s rain, there’s not even enough snow left on the ground to make a goddamn snowball. What’s left are the ruined trees. My honey locust among them.

I want it all to just go away, but when the doorbell rings again I know there’s no stopping this.

As soon as I open the door, I smell the cigarettes all over him. “Mr. Ashland,” he says more than asks.

“You the service,” I say.

“That’s right, sir. J. W.’s Tree Service. I’m J. W. Good to meet you.”

“Here for my honey locust,” I say.

“Yes sir. If you’ll just sign there, please.” He hands me the bid sheet on a clipboard, pointing to the blank line that needs my name. I don’t even bother to check the price to make sure it’s what he and Beverly agreed to when he came by a few days after the storm.

“We’ll have that mess out of here in no time, sir.”

“I planted that mess over thirty years ago,” I say, forcing myself to look away from my mangled tree. Right down at the pack of Camels in the breast pocket of his work shirt. I was sixty-one last time I smoked. Almost five years since they told me they were taking a lung. All these years short of breath, and there still isn’t a day I don’t think about having one.

“It’s a shame, sir. Beautiful tree.”

I stand in the open doorway and watch him head off down the walk to where the kid is crouched pouring gasoline into one of the chainsaws. The kid looks to be at the far end of high school, maybe eighteen, and he’s concentrating hard on what he’s doing, like there’s more than a mess riding on his not spilling the gas onto my driveway. He screws the gas cap down, slides the plastic sheath off the bar and hands the saw to J. W. who eyes along the chain. Satisfied, J. W. pumps the fuel bulb, pulls the choke then sets the saw down, putting his foot through the trigger guard as he pulls at the starter cord. The saw sputters until the motor kicks in and blue smoke rises all around him. He stands and revs it, the pitch winding higher and higher into a jagged whine before he finally eases off the trigger and lets the thing fall into an idle.

For days I’ve been trying not to look at my ruined honey locust a few yards away in the center of the front lawn, but I have to look now. The trunk is shattered at the main crotch about twenty feet up, so most of the crown with its barely turned leaves is hanging down like a woman bending forward to comb out her long hair. From what Beverly says, it’s the same all over town.

But today we’re near sixty degrees. The sun’s shining. I got squirrels and birds hopping across my lawn. More like late April than late October. Staring up into the empty blue sky it’s hard to believe that the sick snap and groan of that honey locust pulled Beverly and me out of bed and onto the living room couch where we looked through the picture window at the broken branches piling up with falling snow.

J. W. shuts off the saw, sets it on the driveway and unzips the army duffel. He hands hard hats, a climbing harness, leg spikes, and coils of rope to the kid who arranges them side-by-side on the lawn. My chest begins to feel tight, tighter than usual, and I decide I better go back inside.

By the time I reach the bathroom cabinet, I’m wheezing hard. I see my boney face in the cabinet mirror, hairless and grey, and I think about the way all things eventually come apart. Behind that face are my pills—Elavil, M.S. Contin. Pills with names like the ships I sailed on in the Navy. Pills I sometimes take and sometimes kiss and wash down the kitchen sink one at a time, depending on the fuel level in my hope-tank. There’s a little container of dental floss next to the sink. I pick it up, snap off a length and start in. Dying with Dignity, a book I charged out from the library, is on top of the toilet tank. I don’t recall ever reading it while sitting there, but I must have brought it in at some point. I don’t get through more than a handful of teeth when the ridiculousness of the situation—a dying man flossing while staring at the cover of a death-book he’s left on top of the crapper—gives me one of those sad-funny well ain’t life a bitch moments I’m long since sick of.
I grab the bottle of oxycontin and go to the picture window where I can look out across the front porch at what’s left of my honey locust. Used to be that almost every day when I came home from the paper mill I’d sit on the porch swing for a while and watch its thorny, green branches sway in the wind or its snow-covered skeleton hunkering down beneath the flat winter sky. Trimming the thorns off the trunk and otherwise keeping an eye on it had been my habit ever since I planted it thirty-three years ago to grow into blocking out the transformer and telephone pole behind. But there was more to it than fixing a bad view. There is what we decide to take and what we can give back. There is the grind of the mill and the sulfur stink of stripped logs being processed down to slurry, and there are the trees I’ve planted on this deep lot, one for each year here, the first of them all now halved and dying in the middle of my front lawn.

I hear a chainsaw’s angry buzzing, but smaller this time, higher pitched. J.W. comes into view with the sixteen-incher to take the tops off the hanging half of the crown so the tree will drop right after they face and back cut the trunk. I know my way around a chainsaw, around trees. I should be doing this myself, even though I’m dying. Beverly understands how I feel, which is why she put the call in to the tree service before I was even out of bed the morning after the snowstorm. Part of me wants to go out there and tell them to just cut it along the split and tar the half that’s left. It could live. Stranger things have happened. And if it did? Like Beverly would want to stare out at the tar-blacked half of my honey locust for the rest of her days.

J. W. starts going at those torn limbs, the pitch of the saw changing when it bites wood. I’m forgetting to watch my breathing now, and suddenly it feels like someone’s shoved their hands up inside my chest, wrapped them around my one lung and begun wringing. It’s time to drop the shade on all this, which I do before going to sit on the couch with my pills. There’s so much we’d like to avoid. It reminds me of my last visit to the oncologist’s office. “I’m sorry,” Dr. Greenspan had said, “We’ve done everything possible.” He looked truly torn up, like he’d betrayed me, and I think I felt worse for him than for myself. I’m sorry. Imagine having to begin telling someone they’re dying with the same two words you’d use to apologize to a stranger you bumped into on the street.

The saw cuts off, the silence after filling a space of its own, and I remember something I read in a Discover magazine a few months ago about how matter can never be destroyed, only changed. If this is true it means the whole universe already contains everything that ever was or will be. Which, I suppose, makes us all part of one big thing, or at least all related, all individual yet connected, me and Beverly and Catherine the Great and Nixon and Gandhi and Hitler and Jesus and every frog and tree and pile of dog shit and rubber band and piece of paper ever made. Beverly says this is an ugly and Godless way of thinking, she sure as hell isn’t related to any Hitler or dog doo or rubber band. “Honey,” I told her, “Don’t you see that means I always was and always will be part of you?”

To which she said, “You’re a jackass to think you could be anything but always a part of me.”

“This shit’s thorny as hell.” The kid’s voice drifts in through the open window. “What’s he want done with it?”
Once I work up the energy I suppose I’ll have to go out there and tell them.

The night of the storm when Beverly and I sat in the dark on the couch looking out at the locust, we weren’t talking about it, but we were both thinking the same thing: that tree is done. Like me. All through my illness, she’s always tried to put the brave face on things. A transplant. The latest clinical trials. Ever hopeful. But her hope became resignation in time.

“I liked to imagine you sitting out there in the shade reading your paperbacks after I’m gone,” I said.

Her eyes glistened in the blue-white darkness, but she didn’t cry. Her voice held, clear and soft as she told me, “So did I.”

* * *
J. W. cranks up the little Husky and waves me over to the mess of branches hanging down off the totally fucked-up tree. “Let’s do ‘er,” he shouts over the idling motor.

“Right on,” I say, springing up with the ropes over my shoulder and his harness and leg-spikes in my hands. We’ve already cut and humped probably two cords of oak this morning, but the last thing I want is him thinking I’m tired or lazy, because I need this job—the best one I’ve ever had, way better than driving pizzas or working a gas station register or greasing through shifts in a fast food uniform like most of my friends do. We’ve been busting ass with all this shit the storm left behind, and I want him seeing how I hold up my end. Not too many guys my age luck onto a crew like this one. And today, with G. L. and Danimal split off on their own to handle the extra work, J.W.’s eye is on me, and that means the better I do, the sooner I get to climb and use the saws.

I set the gear down on the far side of the tree and walk over to watch J. W. top the smaller branches. He works the saw up from the bottom if a branch is touching the ground, and down from the top if it hangs without pressure.

“So you don’t pinch the chain,” he shouts over the whine.

“I know,” I shout back, “You shown me.”

After he’s sawed all the tops from the hanging limbs, it’s my turn to pull brush mule.

“This shit’s thorny as hell. What’s he want done with it?” I ask, thinking he probably wants it at the curb for city pick-up, an easy haul twenty feet away.

“Drag the branches up there, back into the scrub,” J. W. points at the wooded hill next to the house where I can see a dirt trail leading to a tangled thicket of long-dead cuttings. “Better put on your gloves.”

“Will do,” I say, turning my back to him and keeping my “buncha goddamn fucking bullshit” under the idle of his saw as I pull on my gloves, grab up the thickest of the thorny limbs by their cut ends and start to drag them away.

By the last load I’m stripped to my dirt-smeared T-shirt, sweat rolling down my scratched and bloody arms as I slip my way up the slick mud-path. I do feel like a goddamn mule, grunting, ripping these long branches through the tight spaces between trees, stepping over and through what I’ve already dragged to set what I’m dragging now on top of the pile I’ve made. I stop to catch my breath after. Down the hill, I can see J. W. standing on the porch drinking a cup of coffee, it looks like, and talking to the homeowner, some old guy, who’s like eight-hundred and coughing into his fist now and again. I take my work gloves off, tuck them into the back pocket of my jeans and head down there.

“First one I ever planted,” the old man says, and J.W. nods in sympathy like we’re at somebody’s funeral.

Then it’s an uncomfortable silence and they’re looking at me standing there sweating underneath my grimy baseball hat. I feel drops tickling my nose and wipe my forearm across my face. My muscles got the serious burn going, but I can tell I’ve still got power to give; it’s no worse than two-a-days in pads, and I feel like telling J.W. let’s hit it and bang this job out so we can get on to the next client. Because that’s what getting paid by the job means—harder you work, more you make an hour. Except this is J. W.’s Tree Service, not Donny’s Tree Service, so we do it his way. For now.

“Can I get you something to drink, son,” the old man says, “Coffee? Water?” and I think, damn, if I really was his son I wouldn’t be worried about a drink, I’d be worried about having to bury his ass. His pupils are blasted like he’s on some serious shit. He’s got a thin, white, stubbly head of cut cornfield hair, grey, liver-spotted skin, and he’s breathing in these short little pants as if he’d been going up and down that hill with me. For a second I think maybe it’s my own quick breathing that’s got him going, so I make an effort to slow mine down. I suck in a nose-full of the crisp fall air and the whole world smells turned over, new and wet, full of those smells I love, the gas and oil and sharp tang of fresh sawdust that follows us everywhere.

“I’m fine, sir,” I say, “Thank you.”

“Donny, this is Mr. Ashland,” J. W. says, “I just found out he used to work with my dad over at the mill.”

“We’re all connected,” the old man says, looking at me in this spacey way like there’s some kind of cosmic magic shit in the idea that he happened to work with Grandpa Joe back when the mill employed half the goddamn town.

“Yes, sir,” I say.

“Donny’s my half-sister’s kid,” J. W. says, “Guess you could say he’s my apprentice. Just graduated high school last June.”

“Got your whole life ahead of you, son,” the old man says.

“Yes, sir,” I say thinking I’d sure as hell like to get on with it instead of standing here fucking around.

“I’m teaching him the way of the saw,” J. W. says, “Trying to give him a real education before he decides to go off to college and learn to be a smartass.”

“Measure twice. Cut once,” the old man tells me, “That’s the way of the saw. You can apply that to anything from choosing your girl to your job.”

It’s the same old shit. Everybody thinking I need their advice on how to live just because they were once eighteen.
The old man glances over at the totally fucked-up tree we’ve half cut down and hesitates, “Do you have any tree tar?” he asks.

J. W. starts to get a little nervous. “Well sir, realistically, I don’t think there’s any way we can…I mean, your wife said she wanted us to…”

“I know. I know. Forget it,” the old man starts to turn away, “I guess I better get out of your way.”

“I’m sorry sir,” J. W. says, “really.”

“Nice to meet you, sir,” I say, and the old man nods and cuts us off with a wave as he turns to go inside.

J. W. drains his coffee cup and sets it down. “Let’s get this over with,” he says, almost like he’s mad about it, and I wonder if I did something to piss him off.

We go over to the tree where I’ve left the spurs and climbing harness. J. W. steps through the leg holes of the harness before buckling it on around his waist and between his legs. Then he steps into one of the spurs and cinches up the leather straps, winding the leather around the metal spike running along the inside of his shin before buckling it tight. He does the same with the other. I hand him one end of the coil of rope which he loops through the `beaner hanging off the harness belt. He looks the tree up and down, steps to it and hugs the trunk. He raises one leg and chucks the spur in, then straightens himself up on that leg and digs in with the other. Holding on by one arm and the spurs, he works the flip-line open with his free hand and slips it around the trunk to snap it into the clip on the other side of his belt. “Watch for tangles,” he says to me, meaning the rope hanging down from his waist to the ground coil. Then he’s climbing, working the spurs and flip-line together until he’s way up at the tree’s broken crotch.

“Send the little Husky,” he says. I grab his rope just above the ground-coil and put the two owl eyes in it then fold them inward, toward each other, to make the butterfly hitch in a single line just like he showed me. I wrap the loop around the body of the smaller Husquevarna chainsaw and make it tight. “All you,” I call up to him.

He reels the saw in, frees it from the rope, starts it in one pull then begins cutting down on the shattered base of the hanging fork we’ve already topped. Sawdust floats toward me like golden snow, and I step back. We keep this pace we’ll knock out one, maybe even two more jobs today. That’s a hundred and fifty bucks at least I’ll be taking home for eight hours work, almost six hundred for the week. More than enough to start saving for my own chainsaw and climbing gear; more than enough to buy beer and gas the old ‘Stang so Carol Anne and I can go to the bonfire at the lake tonight and work toward that promise she’s been giving me in installments, as the two of us like to say.

J. W. finally cuts most the way through the limb, and it creaks like an old door as it slowly falls, peeling a layer of bark away from the trunk. He turns the saw off, hooks it by the handle to the ‘beaner on his harness then loops the long rope around the tree’s good fork, putting a running bowline on it. He shakes the rope out for me, and I walk it away from the base of the tree to keep it free of his legs as he flip-lines and spurs his way down.

“Well,” he says once he’s unhooked and standing next to me, “Looks like we can put the face-cut in right there and get it to lie down straight across the driveway.”

I walk the guide rope across the asphalt. In my head we’ve already got this wood cut and piled at the curb for when G. L. and Danimal come by with the trailer.

“Relax,” J. W. says climbing out of the harness and spurs, “Let’s take five.” I notice he’s short of breath and sweating pretty hard, and I realize he hasn’t been looking too good lately, like maybe he’s got a bug or something. He stretches his arms and back as he walks over to the cooler to get a Gatorade.

“You’re the boss,” I say, letting the rope go, but part of me grinds. J. W.’s pissed about something; he’s slowing us up on purpose, and I have no idea why.

“Something wrong?” I ask.

“Nah, there’s nothing wrong.” He opens the tailgate and sits down with his Gatorade. “Let’s just relax a minute. This job isn’t all about cut it down and drag it off, you know. Have a seat.”

“That’s alright,” I say, “I don’t wanna cramp up.”

“Have it how you like,” he says. He gets his pack of smokes from his shirt pocket, shakes one out and puts it to his lips, then he takes it away without lighting up and sits there holding the thing, looking at it like he’s reading a thermometer.

“Mind if I bum one?” I ask.

He snaps back from wherever he’s gone and eyes me up and down like I’m some dead tree, some snag, he’s about to take out.

“Nasty habit,” he says, and he holds out the smoke to me.

“That’s why I do it,” I say, grinning around the cigarette, “Got a light?”

“When you start smoking? ” He asks.

I shrug.

“Your mom know you smoke?”

I shake my head no and take the lighter from him. I fire up the Camel, suck in a hard drag and hand the lighter back. The smoke tastes good. Carol Anne’s already got me nearly hooked on her Winston Lights.

“There’s a lot my mom doesn’t know about me,” I say.

Which is why I’m getting my own place. Why I want to finish this job and get on. Because I got things to do and bills to pay.

“Well, damn, if you ain’t the big man.” J. W. shakes a smoke from the pack for himself. “You oughta relax, Donny,” he says, “You got a whole life to get through.”

I smile and nod. What he doesn’t know is that I’m already roaring down a dirt road toward the life he’s talking about. I’ve got Carol Anne smashed up against me on the bench seat, her hand clamped on my thigh in a mix of terror and joy. I’ve got a smoke between the fingers of my one hand on the wheel, and the arm thrown across her shoulders ends with a beer in my fist. The radio is loud, I mean fucking LOUD, and we’re laughing, screaming every time I top a hill because it seems like, fast as we’re moving, we just might launch ourselves right out of here.

* * *
Goddamn kid is a good kid, but he’s all crash and burn. These trees have a life he still hasn’t learned to feel. And he wants to climb. Wants to work the saws. He’s got to learn to know the tree before he can spur up, or that tree will sure as shit throw him down. He has to let the tree show him where to cut, or that tree might make the saw take a finger, or his hand. He rolls his eyes when I try to tell him, acts like I’m talking some new age bullshit. If he didn’t have pussy on the brain he’d listen when I say an arborist isn’t about cut it up and pay me. An arborist is a surgeon, a healer, someone who cuts out what’s dead or grown wrong so the rest can survive, flourish even. Sometimes the kid seems to get it. Sometimes, like today, like any Friday, it’s nothing to him but a means to an end. A paycheck.

I stub out my smoke on the tailgate, shred what’s left of the tobacco and stuff the butt in my pocket.

“Okay, Donny, let’s do it,” I tell him, and he walks the rope over to the other side of the driveway where he’ll stand and pull once I put the back-cut in and the tree begins to lean. Usually I love this job, cutting away dead limbs and crossed branches and shaping a canopy away from rooftops and power lines, but this is just too much. Beverly told me when I did the bid that her husband doesn’t have much time, and she needed get this handled right away because she doesn’t want him staring out their front window at the wreckage of something he’d loved for so long. As if staring at the stump and the telephone pole behind it will be any better for him. The whole time she’s telling me this, I can see some little girl behind her in the living room waiting on her accordion lesson, waiting to learn “Blow the Man Down” or “Greensleeves.” Because that’s what life does, it goes right on having accordion lessons in spite of us, and that’s how Beverly keeps it together in the face of it all: she teaches the accordion to little kids and tries not to think about living without her husband. I charged her half of what I usually would, but she didn’t even read the bid sheet—she would have paid whatever I asked. While she was signing I noticed all the school pictures and wedding pictures and baby pictures on the mantle behind her. They probably had sunny-day picnics with their kids and their grandkids horsing around in this yard under the shade of that tree, those sweet smelling clusters of honey locust flowers falling down around them like in some movie or a dream. Now the heart of that tree’s been ripped open to the pulp and there’s no saving it.

I crank up the Husky 450 and put in the face-cut, careful about the angle so the tree will lay itself down along the line I imagine.

“You ready,” I shout over to Donny who looks to have his mind on what he’ll be doing tonight with that girl instead of on what he’s doing right now.

“Get your head out,” I say, and he sets his mouth and nods, tightens his grip on the rope.

I’m three-quarters through the back-cut when the tree begins to lean wrong, falling toward my truck in slow-motion, and I already see the bed crushed when Donny heaves on the guide-rope, barely managing to swing the trunk just past the trailer hitch so it’s only branches scratching the truck and no real weight hitting the bed.

“Goddamn, Donny” I shout, cutting off the saw and running over. I’ve got to keep down the urge to smack him upside his head and knock off his hard hat.

“What happened? Weren’t you pulling?” Then I notice he’s just as upset as I am, and suddenly I’m not sure if it was his lack of pulling or my bad face cut that made the tree fall wrong.

“Hell yes, I was pulling,” he says, “I was pulling my fucking ass off to keep it away from the bed. Why’d you face-cut like that? Why didn’t you move the truck?”

I’m ready to tell him to shut his punk mouth because if fourteen years of tree work has taught me anything it’s how to make a tree lie down where I want. Then I realize it could have been both our fault. Or neither. Trees will just fall their own way sometimes, no matter how much you know or how careful you are.

“Damn it, Donny. You got to pull harder,” and I leave it at that, though I know he’s right about how I just should’ve moved the truck in the first place. I look over my shoulder to check if Mr. Ashland has seen what’s going on, but the picture window shade is down, and the house looks still and empty like he’s already left us.

We start to section up the trunk and limbs, both of us catching ourselves now and then on the thorns. I let Donny work the little Husky, partly because I feel guilty for yelling at him, and partly because it’s time he learns. He does good with the saw, uses it just like I showed him, as an extension of the line of his arm. Once we’ve finished, he grabs some of the choice cuts and starts setting them in the bed.

“Take those out,” I say.

“Why?”

“Because I said so is why,” I tell him, and I can see him bristle, but I don’t care. Even if I tried to explain, he wouldn’t understand the reasons why every single stick of it should stay here.

“I figured you wouldn’t mind if I took a few sticks for tonight before G. L. and Danimal come with the trailer,” he says.

“G. L. and Danimal got other things to do with the trailer,” I say. “We’re stacking this wood near the side door for Mr. Ashland. So get it out of the bed and don’t fuck up his lawn starting the stack.”

“Fine. Whatever,” he says, taking the wood back out and setting it on the grass near the driveway. “You don’t need to ream me out for it. I was just trying to score a little wood for the bonfire.”

“Green wood don’t do shit but hiss and smoke,” I say.

“Well, since when do we stack people’s wood for them?”

“Since right now, goddammitt.”

He lets out a groan to make sure I know he’s pissed but still gathers up a big armload of logs and starts toward the side of the house. He is a strong kid, already bigger than a lot of men, and still without his full growth. He could become one mean, dangerous bastard if someone doesn’t keep an eye on him. Monica, his mother, has already sensed our old man’s dark streak in him, and I owe it to her to do what I can. I shouldn’t have snapped at him the way I did. Doesn’t teach him much of anything worth learning.

It’s three by time we’ve got all the honey locust stacked, the lawn around the stump raked, and the sawdust swept off the driveway and walk. I don’t bother knocking to tell Mr. Ashland we’re through; if he’s resting, he doesn’t need to be disturbed, and Beverly and me have already discussed the check I’ll be getting in the mail. So I just pull the carbon off the paperwork, fold it up, and stick it in the mailbox mounted next to the front door of the house.

Donny’s already in my truck waiting when I come down the walk. I can tell through the windshield that he’s searching my eyes, trying to see if I’m still pissed at him or if I’m just tired. Well, I am tired, all the time lately, and irritable, and this weird itch in my throat makes me think I should go see a doctor even though I don’t want to. Maybe I’m just getting old. Only thirty-three, and I can’t climb and carry quite like I used to, though I’ve learned some little thing with each tree I’ve taken down. Each tree that is so much more than a tree if you take the time to understand what you’re dealing with and why.

“That’s all for today,” I say as I get in and slam the door, “Let’s knock off.”

“Knock off?” Donny doesn’t try to hide the disappointment in his voice. “You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” I say, “And yeah you’ll be getting your pay in cash today so quit your bitching.”

“I wasn’t bitching.”

I take a smoke out and light it, thumb without looking over to the stump I’ve cut nearly level with the ground. “Donny, what kind of tree was that we just took out?”

“I don’t know. A linden?”

“A honey locust, Donny. Some of the hardest wood there is next to ebony. Tree like that can live a hundred and fifty years or more, see generations of people come and go unless some storm or sickness takes it down.”

“Not this one.”

His smartass shit nearly makes me snap, but I can’t blame him. He doesn’t realize anything more than he’s sore and swiping back at me. I take a deep breath, calm myself. I don’t want to drop the ball this time.

“That’s not the point,” I say. “Point is you need to learn the difference between the trees, Donny. It’s important to know the differences when most people see things as the same.”

“Okay,” he says, flatly, “I’ll get to work on that,” and I decide to take what he says in a good way.

“Can I bum another smoke?”

I turn the engine over, toss my pack into his lap, “From now on you start buying your own.”

I back out of the driveway and pull onto the street in front of Mr. Ashland’s house. Before I drop it into Drive, I look across Donny, at the pale green ranch. Mr. Ashland is there at the stump, down on one knee, an unlit cigarette between his lips. He’s running his fingers lightly over my cut, following the rings in a slow circle. I imagine he’s considering time. All that has passed. How much he has left. There is the honey locust wood stacked against the side of his house. A year, at least, before it will be dry enough to burn, and I doubt he even has that long. Already, I can feel the absence of my half-nephew next to me. He’s gone, off in his mind thinking about a future of drinking cheap beer with his buddies and their girlfriends beside a hissing, smoky bonfire at the lake. I consider tapping the horn to get Mr. Ashland’s attention so I can wave goodbye, but I don’t because he lifts his head just then as if called. He’s looking right at me, though I can tell it isn’t really me he’s looking at. It’s something else, something that makes him smile. And that’s what he’s doing as I smile back and drive away: smiling a tight, grim smile, his fingers still circling and working their way toward the center of that tree’s severed life where he will end by touching the beginning.

First published in Hunger Mountain, Winter 2009: 47.

Photo Sources:
Thorned Honey Locust, Pentachoron, Flickr
Honey Locust Tree, Buzzle.com
Cigarette, The Canary Report

Editor’s Note: What follows is an excerpt from Speaking Truths, a forthcoming novel based, in part, on actual events. The trauma-filled world of Landon Starker, created by author Dayna Hester, has been lauded as a psychological case study and a plea to raise awareness about child abduction. The book is inspired by the humane work of Take Root, a non-profit agency whose mission is to help victims of child abduction recover from the ordeal of being abducted. Speaking Truths marries the testimonials of real-life victims to the theories of acclaimed trauma specialist Dave Ziegler, Ph.D. The story examines the up-and-down recovery of a foul-mouthed teenager whose life is filled with half-truths and repressed memories until his fractured psyche is kicked open like a floodgate. The novel is due to be released in the fall.

“Landon, go to bed.” Bob was sitting in his recliner, trying to make good on his promise to cut back on drinking. It wasn’t a promise I wanted.

“What? No, I’m awake.” I wasn’t, though. It was only nine o’clock, but between the police station bullshit the night before, and then trying to fake a school day when I didn’t have one, I was exhausted. I readjusted myself on the couch and tried to keep my left eye open, the one on Bob’s side, and let the other one shut.

“Landon, you’re falling asleep. Go to bed.” There was something kind of sad in Bob’s voice. I figured it was because he didn’t have the Jack Daniel’s flowing through his veins. Bob and sobriety don’t mix. He had this angry side to him, like the world was out to get him, and if something set him off, he was gonna take care of it—sober or drunk. But I learned early on that if he’s drunk, I could get him sidetracked by agreeing with him and telling him I saw the world through his eyes.

And anyway, I wasn’t too worried about his mood. I looked over to the half-filled bottle of Jack on the kitchen counter. I was sure it was only a matter of days until the top came off again. His “cutting back” on the drinking always followed the same pattern: something crazy would happen, like me getting arrested; he’d vow not to touch the hard stuff and only stock up on beer; a few days would pass; by the end of the week, he’d be back to shooting whiskey chasers during TV commercials.

When we first moved into the trailer, back when it was a dairy farm, Bob used to hang out with the workers. Most of them were from Mexico, and they left their families to come work in the United States. They lived on the property in what Bob called “the army barracks.” I went inside them a couple of times. They were these half-circle metal buildings filled with bunk beds. They didn’t have indoor bathrooms because there were only three places with running water on the property: up at the milking barn; the main house, which was off limits; and our trailer. That’s how I met Jandro, one of the workers. He knew enough English to tell Bob what the workers needed or what needed to be fixed, and to joke with me. I was his el niño leche.

Bob started taking Jandro and a couple of the guys into town on paydays to make a tequila run. When they’d get back, everyone would sit around on plastic milk crates in front of our trailer, and Bob would build a bonfire. One time, one of the workers got up to use our bathroom, which wasn’t a big deal because everyone was kinda relaxed about going in and out of the trailer. I was twelve at the time and the memory plays in slow motion. Through the window, Bob saw the guy who was using our bathroom stop to touch one of his rifles on the gun rack above the television. In a split second, Bob lost it. I was standing at the front door, inside the trailer, looking at the guy holding the rifle. He was wobbling back and forth, so drunk that he couldn’t hear what was going on outside.

Bob jumped to his feet, pulled out the nine millimeter that he kept tucked in his belt when he’s home, and started pointing it at everyone around the fire. It’s weird what a gun does to people. I saw one or two of the workers run away, not afraid of being shot in the back. The rest, though, put their hands up and shook their head, saying words in Spanish that Bob didn’t understand—I could tell that was making him angrier. I saw the beads of sweat dripping from their foreheads. I wondered whether it was from the flames flaring up out of the fire pit or because of Bob’s drunken index finger on the trigger.

I backed into the kitchen as I saw Bob wobbling his way toward the opened front door of the trailer. I was pinned against the refrigerator, my eyes frozen on the gun. Bob stumbled up the stairs into the trailer. I was positive that he’d trip over the last step and the gun would go off.

Bob yelled out to the worker, “Put my fuckin’ gun down! Now!” only he was so drunk that his sentence slurred into one unidentifiable word. The worker turned around, not because he understood Bob, but because he heard the footsteps. His eyes widened and he started mumbling something in Spanish as he backed into the wall. I just prayed that he wasn’t thinking about running away.

Then suddenly a hand grabbed mine, yanking me out of the trailer behind Bob’s back. It was Jandro. He wrapped his arms around me to hold me still and put his hands over my ears. I could smell the tequila on his breath and felt the sweat through his T-shirt. My heart pounded in my ears. I tried with all my strength to break free, but Jandro kept holding onto me. From where I was, I could only see the back of Bob’s feet standing inside the trailer. I couldn’t scream for fear that Bob might turn around and think I was trying to run away. I knew Jandro didn’t understand what he was doing, but he was holding me so tight, I could barely squirm. He was patting my back, thinking it would calm me down; it just made things worse. Tears started streaming down my face. I kept my eyes glued to Bob’s heels, praying he wouldn’t turn around, wondering where I was.

The gun went off.

I heard Bob’s laugh, a belly-laugh from the bottom of his gut.

The worker holding the rifle bolted out of our trailer. Jandro’s eyes followed the worker, confused. His grip loosened. I squeezed myself free and ran into the trailer. There was Bob on the couch, laughing hysterically, and a bullet hole in the wall about a foot away from where the worker’s head had been.

I looked out the living room window and the workers were gone—all of them, even Jandro. The dairy farm closed about six months later, but even before that, there were no more tequila runs, no more bonfires, and Bob drank only beer for three days after.

“Landon, go to bed. You can have the bed to yourself.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m fine out here.”

“I’m telling you to do something. Go do it.” I bolted up before he said any more. I didn’t want any part of what happened that morning after the police station to repeat itself.

“Wait,” Bob commanded.

I stopped in my tracks and turned around to face him. “Yeah?”

He leaned forward in his recliner, making sure his nine millimeter and remote control balanced on his lap. He shook his head side to side slowly and looked over at me through the corner of his eye. “I try to help you do things with your life but you never see it. You don’t take my advice. You think you’re better than me somehow, don’t you?”

“No, that’s not true.” My eyes darted over to the counter. The half-filled Jack Daniel’s bottle was still untouched. A sober comment about life wasn’t a good sign from Bob. I felt my palms sweating. “I know you try to help me. I just do stupid things sometimes, but I want to learn from what you—”

He turned his head and looked me straight on. “You were a mistake. One big mistake.”

“What do you—” I caught myself, looked again at the whiskey bottle. I let my hands rest at my side, dropped my head, and relaxed my body, wanting to give him all the signs that I wasn’t there to resist. I tried to pick my words to express the right thought. “I’m sorry, Dad. Maybe you can help me fix myself.”

“Too late. You’re too old now. And you’re not worth it anyway.” He turned his head back to face the TV. I stood for a second, waiting for any last words, but he didn’t utter a sound. He leaned back in his recliner and focused on watching his war movie while the TV reflection flickered off his face. I was positive he’d be waking me up in a couple of hours to work out his aggression. Maybe I deserved it.

I was dead asleep. The first sound I heard, I think my brain just said, There’s a weird noise outside, but I didn’t fully wake up. I was too tired. It was some kind of swishing sound against the outside wall of the trailer. My arms and legs felt heavy. I was going right back to sleep when I heard the noise again and realized I knew exactly what it was.

Leaves.

Leaves crunching on the ground.

I threw the covers to the side and sat bolt upright. I thought my ribcage would burst because my heart was pounding so hard. I looked left; Bob wasn’t there. The blankets were untouched. The gun wasn’t on the nightstand. I jumped up, moved the blinds away just enough to see outside. Flashlights? Then a huge crashing sound came from the living room. I went to run down the short hallway toward the front door but froze in my steps as our trailer started to rock back and forth.

“Get on your knees! FBI!”

I dropped to the ground. The first sign I saw of them were the small lights attached to their rifles. Beams of lights swirled and bounced all over the walls. Two men in all black, with their faces behind their rifles, came down the hallway and grabbed me.

I was dizzy, confused.

I didn’t see Bob. Or his gun.

The television was off.

The remote control was on the ground.

They held me under my armpits and rushed me out of the trailer. When we got outside, I saw FBI agents everywhere, crisscrossing in front of me. Most were dressed in black with knit caps, and a couple had a big “FBI” in white letters on their backs. All of them were holding rifles in firing position, like they do at the shooting range. I saw at least two guard dogs, the ones that sniffed out drugs. Through the trees, I caught a glimpse of car headlights driving up the dirt road. The headlights from a car in the back illuminated a cloud of dust that the lead cars had kicked up. A helicopter swooped down and hovered around the area. Its spotlight created a frantic sun shining on the trailer.

The two guys that had a hold of me were nothing like the cops who had busted Sam and me. There was something serious about them that filled me with fear. “In here.” I could barely hear them over the hovering helicopter. The night was a riot of sound: dirt swirling through the air smacked into the cars; the overgrown tree branches whooshed and clanked in the wind. The agent opened the back door of a black car parked nearby and put his hand on top of my head, pushing me down lightly to make sure I didn’t hit myself on the door jamb. He shut the door. I wasn’t kicking or squirming. I didn’t have words for what was going on. I just stared as a huge spotlight powered up. The whole scene looked like daylight, except in the background the moon hung—suspended and still in the night sky.

As if on cue, the helicopter began to rise and banked away. One of the guys hopped into the front seat, nodded to me, dropped it into drive, and we were out of there. I turned around to look through the back window. I could see cars driving up to the main house. In the far distance, over the cornfields that used to be cow pastures, the helicopter spotlight roamed, zigzagging from side to side. I tried to compose myself and gather whatever information I could. I stared out, scanning for Bob’s van, but between the dust and the dimming lights, the world I left had all but disappeared.

When the agent made a right turn onto Highway 91, I faced forward and dropped my head. I was detaching from my life, like a balloon let go in the sky, floating farther away each second. I wasn’t that kid who walked into English class two days ago. I was terrified. Whatever was going on, it was larger than me. Yet a part of me knew it wasn’t larger than Bob.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dayna Hester received her bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy from UCLA. To research her first novel, Speaking Truths, she completed an independent study on the psychophysiology of trauma, focused on the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety disorders. She currently resides in California with her husband, Bruce McNall, former owner of the Los Angeles Kings, and her three children.

Editor’s Note: What follows is an excerpt from Venceremos, a novel by Howard Waxman. The book is the coming-of-age tale of Jay Cardinale, a 21-year-old injured Vietnam War hero and second tour deserter. The passage below describes Jay’s rocky boat ride to Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade, a group of American volunteers going to help with the sugar harvest. Once there, Jay does much more than cut cane. He falls in love, learns the truth about politics, plots murder, meets Fidel Castro, and becomes a new man.

The interior of the Luis Arcos Bergnes was warm and dry. The ship had been a cattle boat but was converted by the Cubans into a floating barracks, with a double layer of bunks in what had been the hold. The men and women had separate areas. I’d thought I’d been in close quarters when I was in basic training but that was spacious compared to this scene. There was hardly any room to stow our gear and most people would end up sleeping with their bags and suitcases.

We finally got to eat some hot food; the women served first and then the men. I don’t remember much more about that first night except saying goodnight to Walter. I probably passed out.

The seas were rough in the North Atlantic and a lot of people were seasick through the first part of the trip. I was one of them. Being seasick on this trip wasn’t such a bad deal. From the time we got on board it seemed like an endless meeting was taking place with everyone trying to shout down everyone else. Whatever the meetings were supposed to be about, they always wound up focusing on a few themes: white guilt, third world leadership, women’s liberation, and evolution versus revolution, that is, whether to wait for the workers or take matters into our own hands.

Everyone was extremely serious about the whole thing, as if they had to come to some decision because tomorrow we were going out to storm the Bastille or the Winter Palace and the day after that we would be in charge so we had better have our act together. I really didn’t know much about the revolutionary movement before I started hanging out in Eddie McWilliams’ house. But there were books about it all over the place and I ate them up. To me they were adventure stories, war stories. Even our own revolution.

I’d sit in a big arm chair in the McWilliams’ library room smoking a joint and reading Lenin and Marx and Mao. There was some Stalin, too, and Ho Chi Minh and the guy from Albania whose name I always forget. And while I was reading, all around me the kids were having their endless arguments about whether we should be focused on educating the working class or moving ahead as a revolutionary cadre to act immediately, and whether whites could only follow the lead of blacks in making a revolution in America, and whether women should be in the forefront.

Did Lenin and Trotsky sound as pompous to the casual listener when they were having their arguments while living like paupers in exile? Did the guard watching over the reading room in the British Library know that the scruffy mountain of unkempt hair who came in every day was Karl fucking Marx who actually was going to change the world? What about the waiters at the posh hotel in London where Ho washed dishes? Did they have any idea that the skinny gook was going to be the father of his country and stop U.S. imperialism dead in its tracks?

Maybe some kid on the Luis Arcos Bergnes was going to be President someday. It didn’t seem possible, but most people listening to Lenin no doubt thought he was just another delusional windbag.

Although I was so sick I mostly wanted to die and be buried at sea, I was glad not to be in the meetings. I knew I would have gotten caught up in the heat of the moment and started spouting a lot of nonsense that I didn’t understand. Not that there were a lot of meetings I could have been in. The blacks had their own meetings and the women had their meetings, and the white men had trouble figuring out where they belonged. What was our common identity except we were white and men and were at fault for everything that was wrong?

Walter wavered between being upset that he wasn’t in any group and being glad that he wasn’t.

“Sometimes I want to shout ‘Enough already!’ but then I think of something I want to say and I have no one to say it to,” he said to me.

“But you’re a white man,” I said. “What could you possibly have to say?”

“Very funny. But, come on, don’t you feel the same way?”

“Sure. But you can’t fight history. And history says it’s their time. If we’re really supposed to follow, then shut up and follow.”

“But when I think they’re wrong—”

“It doesn’t matter. You have to step aside and let people find their way. You know I’m right.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t make me like it any better.”

Another benefit of being at the rail was getting to spend time with Avis who was also in the seasick club. The first morning out I met her clinging to the rail as the ship tossed and the wind cut through us like we were naked.

“I hate this,” she said.

“Kind of undermines your image as an authority figure.”

“Fuck you.”

“Think of it as your martyrdom for the cause.”

“You suck.”

“This is what your statue will look like after the revolution, bent over the rail giving it all up so that others may have smooth sailing.”

“I hope you fall overboard.”

“I’ve always gotten seasick. I didn’t even think about it when I decided to come. I guess that’s how dedicated I am.”

“This is my first time on a ship. I’m going to walk home.”

“I used to go out fishing all the time when I was a kid and almost always got seasick. It really pissed me off because no one else in my family did. We all went out on the fishing boats from Sheepshead Bay, my father and grandfather and uncles and cousins, and of the whole gang of us, I was the only one who ever hit the rail. It was a family joke. I was the family joke.”

“Did it ever stop?”

“Yeah, when I stopped going.”

“Too bad.”

“Nah. It wasn’t one of my favorite things to do anyway. I like being warm and dry and going out for blues and flounder was cold and wet. The only part I liked was when the captain would take pity on me and let me hang out on the bridge. Taught me the controls and even let me steer. Took my mind off being sick.”

A really big wave lifted the side of the ship and for a moment we were thrown together. Avis pulled away as soon as she had her balance back.

“The captain says it’ll stop when we get closer to Florida,” she said.

“When is that?”

“Three or four days.”

“We’ll be dead by then.”

“I hope so.”

We both threw up and then went back inside.

“Hey,” I said. “Thanks for letting me come.”

“Don’t fuck up.”

She walked away. I was happy. The ice was broken.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Howard Waxman’s plays include Joan La Poucelle, Punk Rock, Landslide, Knuckle Sandwich, September Walk, and On the Border. He was the Off-Broadway reviewer for Variety and his political column, “Scoundrel Time,” appeared in Lake Champlain Weekly. He recently finished his second novel, Venceremos. Born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., he lived in Madison, Wis., San Francisco, Santa Fe, Manhattan, and rural New York State before settling in beautiful Bath, Maine.