Timber

The sunlight spread out in fragmented beams over the intricate mosaic of earth that was the forest floor. The aroma of pine and diesel was thick in the dense, misty air. Among the soft rustling of leaves and the tittering of birds could be heard a familiar, though wholly out of place song.

Dixie.

Bruce Hammond always whistled Dixie on long days, logging in the mountains of Oregon. It was a habit that drove the other lumberjacks crazy, but he couldn’t help it. It was akin to a nervous tick; something he’d just always done. He blamed it on his Alabama upbringing.

The whistling stopped when, exhausted from having chainsawed and hauled his work, he leaned against a yellow truck, wiping the beads of sweat on his brow with an old, dirty handkerchief from the front pocket of his drenched coveralls.

“This sort of thing happens more than people know,” he said, quietly.

“What’s that you’re saying over there?” Brock Sanders, a fellow lumberjack, was taking a leak only a few feet away. Apparently, that wasn’t far enough for him not to have heard Bruce’s muttering.

Bruce cleared his throat and spoke up.

“I said, ‘this sort of thing happens more than people know.’”

“You got that right,” Brock scoffed. “Can you imagine?”

Bruce simply shook his head in silence and reached up to stroke his beard when he suddenly realized that he shouldn’t do that. His hands were filthy, which reminded him – there was still a job to be done.

He abruptly left the side of the truck and went to work, gathering equipment from the forest floor. He picked up the broken chain and rolled it up over his palm and forearm. It drug through the dirt and leaves, leaving behind small trails of partially coagulated blood.

He carried the hefty metal over to his site boss.

“Albert! What do you want me to do with this?”

“Same thing we did with the rest of the waste,” he answered. “Get moving.  I want to be cleared out of here in less than an hour.”

Bruce wandered away from the site until he found a fir with a large enough hollow to hold several feet of steel chain. He heaved the mass into the dark cavern and a tinkling rustle echoed back.

On a logical level, it made sense to him why they were doing what they were doing. Money had to be made and the industry was suffering so much already, with new restrictions and preservation laws. It wasn’t as though the world could continue to build and thrive without the use of good, quality lumber. Nothing could further stand in their way. Nothing.

He rationalized what he had done, to himself, on behalf of Pine Mountain Logging, Incorporated. It was the only way that he could reach an absolution within his own mind. It was the only way that he could sleep at night. Even then, it didn’t always work.

He knew that as soon as his head hit the pillow that night, he would see their faces. Their voices would echo in his ears.

“Save the forest! Save the trees!”

They chanted that same, simple mantra over and over. Fifteen people – 8 men and 7 women – had chained themselves to a towering spruce right in the middle of today’s worksite. They were wearing matching sky blue t-shirts with some type of logo printed on the front, though it was difficult to make out exactly what it said through the chains.

When Bruce had pulled up with the rest of the crew, he had nearly spilled his coffee on himself.

“Not again,” he’d choked.

His boss had climbed out of his vehicle and walked right up to the men and women chained to the tree. Some impassioned words were exchanged, which Bruce could not make out, but the indication was that the group would not soon be moving.

“Boys,” Albert had yelled out to the crew, “You know what to do!”

Bruce’s hands had trembled as his chainsaw fired up in unison with others. The faces of the protestors grew pale as cotton sheets. They stood their ground for a moment, but soon started to fight against the chains, attempting to break free. Some of them began to cry.

A shower of blood rained down on the loggers’ faces. Bruce had closed his eyes as the hot, sticky liquid spattered against his face and body. Bits of flesh and bone rebounded off of his coveralls. As soon as he felt a heavy, round ball hit his boot, he stopped sawing. Brown eyes looked up at him, through a face frozen in terror, from the ground.

Once all of the chainsaws had stopped, Albert had called out his next order:

“De-limb!”

Ghastly as it was, they had dismembered every last body and hauled the parts across the forest, to adjacent tree hollows.

It was all just a part of the job. He supposed he could rationalize anything, if he really tried.

Bruce wiped his filthy hands on the blood-stained legs of his coveralls and headed back to the worksite. The sun was beginning to set and there was still more clean up left to do. He walked with his head down, watching his boots, step by step, whistling Dixie in the cool mountain air.



Word Count: 886