Scaling Rexford

SCALING REXFORD



         

         He stumbled through the scale house door that first day, waving a scale ticket and bouncing off the door jam.  His eyes whiskey wild and pupils tight as pinpoints, he slapped the small square card on the counter and staggered me with moonshine breath. 

         "Scale'er boy," he told me, his speech colored by local white lightning. "There's a load on her."

         Through the tiny window I could see his fourteen-year-old Mack wedged tight between the tire-high wooden scaffolding paralleling each side of the truck lane.  His old truck carried six hundred thousand log hauling miles and a load of lodgepole and alpine fir logs, the dregs of the lot.  Later I would know that Rags was usually the last load of the day.

         I stepped out the door into a fading late summer afternoon sun and studied the truck.  Brush and limb marks crisscrossed it's deeply oxidized green paint.  The doors closed hard and nothing remained of the cab except dented metal and fractured glass.  The other drivers called him Rags, shortened from 'raggedy-ass trucker'.  The truck had set years behind the Rexford bar abandoned to the tire-rotting and paint-fading sun until Rags came along.  Jasper Northey owned the bar and the old Mack, a default from a gypo logger who couldn't pay his tab.  They struck a bargain, Jasper and old Rags, Jasper turning a buck on the truck and Rags never lacking for Northey's unbonded trade.

         Rags drove in a washed-thin pair of gray cotton bibs worn over black woolen pants and a torn red flannel shirt that needed an oil change.  His age was on hold somewhere between forty and sixty and his snarled gray hair fell from under a dented aluminum hard hat.  He had given up shaving with any regularity, always it seemed, wearing six days of salt and pepper beard.

         The St. Regis Paper Company moved into virgin timber that year.  Chain saws roared, cutting western larch, white pine, and fir, three to four feet on the stump.  They hired me as a timber scaler, barely out of college, and we measured logs in board feet -- they called it 'scaling'-- daylight to dark.  We scaled climbing still loaded twelve-foot wide off-highway trucks.  The loads ran three to ten sticks, averaging thirty inches.  The drivers hovered over me in the tiny scale shack as I tallied their load.  All were positive that I, as the company representative, would short them.

         In the woods, the drivers had a strict rotation on who sat first under the heel boom loader each morning.  The first two or three trucks got the better logs and were able to make three rounds during the day.  The unwritten code demanded that if you missed your turn you went to the end of the line.  Rags never did make his first turn and always came in dead last.  Some days he would only make one load.  He'd start sipping from his mayonnaise jar while he waited his turn under the heel boom.  He'd come roaring into the Rexford log landing, just before dark, carrying fifty or sixty scab logs and running without his safety binders on.

         On rare occasions he would pull in sunken-cheeked, hollow eyed, and cold sober.  This condition, so foreign to his nature that he looked a different person, gradually worsened until about the third day of his self-imposed misery, when he began to heal.

         "Never again!" he'd say, slouching in the company's straight-backed wooden chair while I fingered the Olivetti.  "Soon as I save up some cash I'm gonna get me a place.  A good place, with lots of grass and water -- and sheep.  Hundreds of sheep.  There's money in sheep, you know that kid?"

He'd push up his bent hardhat, lay his head back and stare at the water-stained ceiling of the scale shack.  His grease stained fingers stuck out of grimy cloth gloves and his tin pants stood caked with road dirt.  "My old man had a thousand ewes and when I was eighteen I couldn't wait to get away.  Never wanted to see another damned wooly."

         "I wouldn't know the front of a sheep from the back," I said, still adding scale.

         "You've got a good job.  Don't let it go.  Stick to it, kid.  I've drifted all my life.  Had so many jobs I couldn't name them all.  Got nothing to show for it."

         During these temperate periods he would fill me with stories.  I heard of the places he'd roamed, the wars he'd fought, and the women he'd loved.  I believed not a tenth of it.  But they told well, and the words rolled out convincingly, accented by his rolling gray eyes and a wink in the right places.  I wanted them to be gospel.

         Yet, Rags was the only driver who would talk to me, maybe because he too carried the mark of an outsider.  The others eyed me suspiciously, spoke in monosyllables, and mostly ignored us both.

         Rexford, that summer of 1963, before the dam, slept peacefully on the edge of the Kootenai River.  The town lay sheltered by tall yellow pine and surrounded by blue Montana mountains rising sharply out of the valley floor to grind the sky.  The inbred residents were a close-knit bunch, living in houses built of cull two by fours laid up like logs and painted with whitewash.  The Corps of Engineers, with their yellow plastic hard hats and shiny metal clipboards, were yet a year away.  Carpetbagging land appraisers hadn't condemned the reluctant natives and the Rexford Tavern still roared on Saturday afternoon.

         Jasper Northey's bar sat next to Highway 43, on the edge of a backwater pond two hundred yards from the main river channel. Jasper stood just over five feet tall, had little hair on his head, admitted to seventy and looked years older.  He loved to tell stories of the early logging days.  His establishment mirrored that interest.  Over the bar top and lining the walls hung old double bits, broadaxes, crosscuts, springboards, harness parts, chokers, and a broken set of tongs.  By two in the afternoon most Saturdays the tavern began to jump.  Jasper would mix drinks and spin tales, while jukebox music and whiskey noise flowed into a parking lot full of diesel soaked pickups.

         I enjoyed the flavor of the Rexford bar because of its sense of unchanging age.  I soaked up its dingy lights and rustic atmosphere in spite of the cold reception the loggers gave us company men.  The gypos sat on one side of the room and us on the other.  Rags sat mostly alone, sometimes with me, but never with the locals.

         Rags started it on a warm September afternoon.  Awash with homemade brew and running at the mouth, he began bragging Pennsylvania coal miners to be the toughest men alive.  Loudly, he challenged anyone within ear shot to prove him wrong.  No one paid the slightest attention -- until Frenchy Therriault and his brother Porky came in.

         The Therriault brothers were twins and until Porky got his nose smashed in a bar fight in Troy -- thereby gaining his nickname -- they were difficult to tell apart.  Neither man had a neck.  Their bodies started just below their mouths and followed a long curve that ended at toe level.  Neither weighed under three hundred.  Coal black hair covered heads and chins and their round cheeks bulged with Copenhagen.  Both wore black and red checkered wool shirts summer and winter, open in the front from throat to belly, exposing a forest of black chest hair between bright red suspenders and black wool pants.  The Therriault brothers lived to wrestle, the furniture breaking, glass shattering kind that always turned into a free-for-all.  Frenchy's reputation as an arm breaking champion ranged county wide.  Without effort, he regularly won beer by the case holding a Homelite 990 one-handed at arms length to the count of twenty.

         Before I knew it Frenchy had Rags by the front of his faded bibs, toes stretching to touch the floor.  Copenhagen dribbling off the corner of Frenchy's mouth, he demanded to know the name of the person who coveted the toughest-son-of-a-bitch-in-the-county crown he held.  Poor Rags, fear clutching at his throat, pointed at the only person in the place that wasn't a native.  Me.

         Frenchy Therriault dropped Rags like a forgotten toy and chiseled a chunk out of my heart with icy eyes.  "Scaler-kid?" he said, as if asking the gypo crowd.

         Porky laughed and I could see grins abound.  Jasper Northey's bald dome beaded sweat and his head-worn solid ash attitude adjuster hit the bartop.

         "Not in here," Jasper said.  A marauding rhino couldn't have hurt the place's half-log furniture, but Jasper defended it anyway.

         "Wouldn't think of it," Frenchy said, appraising me from head to toe.  The look on his face suggested that he wondered if I was worth it.

         Not that I blamed him.  At six-foot-four I stood a head taller, but my one hundred sixty-five pounds left me a hundred thirty-five short of an even match.  I had trouble holding a six-pack at arms length.

         "Old Rags has had a little too much 'shine," I said.

         "Hell, I know it," Frenchy said.  "I want to give you a fair chance.  Time to make out your will and such."  He sat down beside me and put his arm over my shoulders, friendly-like.  It weighed a ton and I could smell sawdust, sweat and Copenhagen.  He poked me in the ribs with a stubby finger.

         "Ain't much meat there, Scaler-kid.  You should eat more.  I think you and me should get drunk and then we'll wrestle."

         "What if I say no?" I asked.

         "Then we wrestle now."

         "Drink first," I agreed.  Anesthetic sounded like a good plan.

         That's when Rags threw in his wildest claim yet.  "Scotty here's the log rollin' champion of Montana."

         "He's drunk," I said, silently cursing my beer-loosened tongue.  A week earlier I'd told Rags of my college log-rolling experiences.  Influenced by five cans of Great Falls Select, I'd neglected to tell him that I'd lost.

         Frenchy's eyes lit up.  His reputation as a log-roller ran second only to arm-breaking and chain saw holding.  He tightened his grip on my shoulders.  "You got a pair of calks?"

         "Of course, he does," Rags said, appointing himself my second in the duel.

         "Then it's settled.  Scaler-kid and my brother Porky will roll-um."

         I looked at Porky    a flat-nosed replica of Frenchy    and he growled at me.  Frenchy and old Rags began negotiating the rules and pounding the two inch plank bar table making their points.  Jasper drug out a jug of yesterday's batch and bought the house a round.  I asked for a beer, but Frenchy yelled for another pass.

         Out behind the bar, in the backwater slew, a thirty inch log lay half submerged in brackish water.  The loggers played a drunk game on it.  Two contestants stood on the log and rolled it in the water with calk-booted feet trying to unbalance each other.  The loser took a bath in the glacier cold Kootenai.  Most of the time it was a 'king of the mountain' game, with the last one dry the winner.  No one had dumped Porky in years.  I had no hope.

         "Best of seven," Rags argued, downing clear 'shine like water.

         Frenchy held out for three out of five only for the sake of argument, finally conceding to Rags' higher number.  I favored best of one, not relishing more than a single dunking in the pond.

         Another pass of the jug sealed the agreement between the seconds.  Porky and I led the crowd through the back door to the slab covered platform next to the water.  Rags went to my pickup and came back holding my coveted White's; a pair of metal calked logger boots, high heeled, steel-shanked, creek shrunk to fit right, and shiny new.  No self-respecting woodsman would be without a pair.  The crowd cheered while I sat on the rough slabs and tied them on.  The rolling log floated in the slew still and ominous.

         The local loggers built the platform close to the water allowing contestants to step directly onto the log.  Porky and I stood on the edge and we both jumped when Frenchy yelled, "Now!"

         Porky hit the log solid and started it rolling, his heels half in the water as his feet spun the slew-slick log.  He looked like an overweight ballerina up on his toes with his arms wide to counter balance his flying feet and a whiskey grin on his face. 

         My feet hit a split second behind and my timing somehow matched Porky.  For half a minute we both ran as hard as we could, rooster-tailing slew water off both ends of the log.  Then he slammed on the brakes, slowing the spin with his extra weight and I felt myself riding over the top.

         I hit the cold water face first, my mouth open in surprise.  It tasted like decaying fish and my stomach rolled a turn.  Hard hands dragged me out spitting and coughing.  Porky grinned standing on the log, spinning it slowly, taunting me, inviting me to join him.  I shook off the crowd and jumped.

         Fear of the cold water gone, I started to plot.  Instinct guided my spiked boots to a point just below the waterline, knowing that Porky would speed up the moment I moved.  I surprised him with my sudden jump and as the momentum of the log carried me over the top I leapt into the air and reversed direction.  I came down feet positioned and running hard.  Porky's calks flew out and he sat down hard on the log.  His bulk submerged his end, stopped the rotation and threw me into the water for the second time.  I kept my mouth closed, second round, a tie.

         We started even the third round and Porky dumped me easily when my foot slipped.  Grabbing air, I bounced my face hard on the spinning log.  The crowd cheered like Roman spectators.  Minus some hide and a bloodied nose, I dragged myself onto the platform.

         "You're doing good, Scaler-kid," Frenchy said.  "Another hour or two and he'll be worn down.  Then he's a pushover."

         Rags wiped blood and slew scum from my face.  "Keep loose Scotty, do what you did before.  You can beat him."  I drank and climbed to my feet, shaking off dizziness.

         Porky rolled the log slow, playing for the crowd, filling his mouth with fresh Copenhagen, not breathing hard, confident that I would beg off another round.

         "Come on, kid," he taunted.

         I leaped off the platform, aiming my boots below the water line again, and when my calks dug in I jumped and reversed direction.  I caught Porky off guard again and found myself struggling for balance while my opponent disappeared under water.  I made it, running as hard as I could, alone on the log, carefully slowing its spin, wallowing in the moment.  The drunken loggers changed their loyalties and hollered for more.  Someone had dumped Porky clean.  No matter what the outcome, nothing would change that.  For a moment or two I almost believed I could win.

         Porky surfaced and splashed onto the platform.  His face had turned dark red.  He stood on the rough planks, staring at me alone on the log, water dripping off his woolen shirt and pants and puddling under his work worn boots.  His long dark hair hung wet and straight.

         Porky jumped at the log and when he hit his weight submerged his end and lifted me out of the water like a see-saw.  I struggled to keep my balance and failed.  The water reached up and grabbed me again.  My advantage gone, the fickle loggers cheered for Porky again.

         Porky, once dumped, gave no quarter and the contest ended with my fourth trip in to the slew.  I'd both lost and won.

         Frenchy helped me climb out of the water.  "Not bad, Scaler-kid.  Porky hates to lose, even a little," he said.  "Come on, I'll buy you one."

         Porky and I splashed into the bar, wet, chilled to the bone and arms around each other like conquering heroes.  After several passes of the ceremonial jug Jasper Northey crawled up on a barstool and wrote my name under the broken set of tongs with a red lumber crayon.  'Scaler-kid' stained the wall until the day the Corps of Engineers burned the bar along with the rest of Rexford in preparation for Libby Dam.

         I half carried, half walked Rags to his cabin that night.  He rambled mostly nonsense as we stumbled along the gravel road under the northern Montana moonlight.  He fell at his front door and sat grinning up at me.

         "We showed them tonight, didn't we, Scotty."

         "That we did," I said.

         "Goddamn, it felt good.  You did us proud.  I will never forget the look on Porky's face when you dumped him.  It was worth the price."

         "You're forgetting all the time I spent in the water."

         "Worth it, my boy, definitely worth it."

         My still damp clothes smelled like dead fish and the night air sucked moonshine from my pores instead of sweat.  I wanted a hot shower and a warm bed.  Rags sat on the porch, a jar of Jasper's brew beside him, happy as a lamb.

         "God, it feels good to belong somewhere," he said.  I left him sitting in the moonlight and I knew he would not make first round on Monday morning.