The Trouble Way (3 page)

Ma
–Ma is what he and his sister called their grandmother, like the woman in the old Ma and Pa comedy movies – talked of a God that just would not take Priscilla from him. He was absolutely, positively certain of that. Well, what he really knew absolutely, positively about it was absolutely, positively ... rip-shit nuthin’.

Neither knew at the time, but she had two anxiety
-filled short months to the day after that little picnic on the saddle blanket by the creek before God said something to his key grip angel like, “Cut … That’s a wrap … Kill the spot and can it.” The grip doused the spotlight and that little production came to an abrupt end. The light gleaming so brightly on Jake quickly faded to a dying amber glow and was soon merely a fading memory.

Priscilla would be climbing over the tailgate and under the white canopy
lid covering the bed of that old green Ford pickup she, her Dad, Mom, and brother drove west across country to Oregon. They had migrated just like those Okies escaping No Man’s Land of the Oklahoma panhandle, fleeing the dust pneumonia of the dust bowl and heading to California. Priscilla would disappear from his life, forever, for all he knew. He sure as heck had no reason to think her Ol’ Man would flip a U-ie in that rusted-up Ford and beat-tracks back to Oregon just because little Jake-O had a broken heart and
really, really
liked Priscilla. First off, it was a first-class sin, mortal, for all he knew, if Lutherans had such a rule – her dad’s family belonged to a tribe of Lutherans who lived in the East – second, as if a second was even needed, her dad didn’t give a flying fiddly what scrawny Jake-O thought. His uncle had a bigger problem, a homesick wife who hadn’t stopped her daily crying jag for the three months leading up to their departure. Problems don’t get any bigger than a blubbering woman. Jake knew that for darn sure, first hand.

One time, Priscilla started to cry because Jake said she was sure tall. Well, obviously you don
’t tell a tall girl she is sure tall and expect her to start blubbering. He meant it as a compliment. Priscilla was sensitive about her height and didn’t take it as any stupid compliment no matter what he intended; he found that out lickety-split, as his Mom would say. Crying women are no picnic. Another thing, it doesn’t do you a darn bit of good to say you didn’t mean anything by it either. Doesn’t matter one, single, solitary bit. You said it so you darn well meant it. You can say you didn’t mean it till the wet cows come down the lane on a rainy night and the crows roost in the cherry tree at dusk; it doesn’t matter. You better come proficient at saying “I’m sorry,” or you’ll be one miserable José till the last darn crow lights its pointy-ass in the cherry tree. Women are weird that way. “Height” and “I’m sorry” ... that’s about all you need to know about women; that’s it in a gift box with a fancy red bow stuck to the corner, and your name printed in black ink on the gift-tag.

It was around the time Jake really got to
really
liking Priscilla that she disappeared from his life.

Coincidentally, it was shortly after that when he began to question whether
Ma was right in what she was teaching him and the other kids in the neighborhood that God watches out for you. So far, he hadn’t seen any clear evidence of it, at least in the things that were important to him. That thought, too, was definitely a thought he was not about to discuss with anybody, especially Ma. He had heard what they called people like that, people who might have a smidgen of doubt about some of those suspicious “walking on water/talking donkey” miracles he kept hearing about. Those people were called Damned Atheists. It was a long time before he found out they were called just Atheist, the “Damned” was a gratuitous addition people threw in for the
Halibut
, as Jake had heard his grandfather, who was not prone to cussing, say.

May as well have a sense of humor if you tended toward Atheism.

Atheists were probably several rungs on the ladder below Catholics according to what he garnered from his grandmother. Maybe they weren’t even on the same ladder; maybe they had no ladder at all; didn’t deserve one. Ma discouraged him and his sister from playing with Catholic kids at school. Atheist kids, if there were such a thing in their community, weren’t even a topic for discussion. He didn’t have to worry about that conversation with anybody.

Shortly after Priscilla
’s family packed up and headed east, all the shit busted loose and a butt-spank of people around him started dropping like flies on a hot windowsill. You’d think those flies would wing it off someplace else not so blistering hot. Maybe that hot windowsill was “fly hell,” or maybe flies are just plain stupid. After all, they chow down on shit.

Two things lingered in the recesses of Jake
’s mind – well, three, counting Priscilla – constantly churning as he pulled on the heavy cable, unwinding it from the drum on the back of the John Deere cat in which Wendell, his uncle on his mom’s side, was seated. There was a butt-load of friction making it damned-near impossible for him to drag the heavy cable across the underbrush and fallen limbs and briars doing their damnedest to keep him from reaching the log he was trying to set the choker on. Things he heard about in high school. There was something about
Time and Tide Wait for no Man
that bugged him. Well, not so much that it bugged him and it wasn’t even about the time and tide. Mostly it was about the tide, not at all about time. And, it wasn’t just about the tide that kept Jake thinking, it was that something another teacher said, “There’s no such thing as a perpetual motion machine.” He said that people had tried it and every one had failed. It had to do with friction not allowing something to continue on forever without stopping. The laws of motion were involved in there too. Once something was in motion, it stayed in motion unless another force stopped it. That was where friction and gravity came in. And, that’s where Jake got confused; because the tide stayed in motion forever (the time and tide saying). Wasn’t that perpetual? Also, gravity had a great deal to do with the tides, with the sun and the moon and all. Gravity was perpetual. It went on forever and was everywhere in the universe.

His uncle Wendell had given Jake a job during summer vacation. Not that his uncle was all that goddamned generous. He definitely was not generous. What he actually was, was a cheap skate. He never did anything that did not benefit himself in some way. That is how Jake ended up working for his uncle. It was the state. The state stipulated nobody could log by themselves. He needed a second set of eyes in the woods for safety. And since Jake would be there watching for fires;
“How about setting a few chokers,” his uncle suggested, “while you’re at it. It’ll give you some exercise to boot.”

The real kicker was, Jake
’s uncle promised Jake his very own personal log to sell in payment for his fire watching.

“
Come’ere, Jake, take a look at this sonofabitch. This is it. This one’s yours.” His uncle stepped over limbs and fallen logs and branches to show Jake his very own log. He made a big-ass production of the whole thing. “Take this tape and walk to the end of it,” Jake’s uncle pointed to where he wanted Jake to hold the tape. He marked the length and then he rewound the tape did a measurement of the diameter. Noting that, he then pulled a small book from his breast pocket; it looked similar to the tide books Jake had seen fishermen use. Only this was a book of tables that determined the board feet in a log of a certain length and diameter. Once Jake’s uncle found the total board feet, he multiplied it by the going price one board foot of fir lumber.

“
Hell, Jake, this is going to bring in about fifty-five bucks. Not too bad, eh?”

Not too damn bad indeed, Jake thought.

Jake and his uncle stumbled through the underbrush quite a few times to look at that fifty-five dollar log. They measured it and re-measured it. As many times as they looked at it during the time they logged off the area his uncle had bid the state for, they measured it. His uncle calculated and recalculated the figures. “It’s worth fifty-five bucks, Jake,” he’d said each time, pointing to the numbers to verify that he was in fact dead on in his calculations and was telling him God’s truth.

When it came time, Jake pulled the heavy cable from the drum at the back of the John Deere cat and dragged it over fallen limbs, stumps, through tangles of vine maples and thorny blackberry vines, and finally got the choker hooked around his very own fifty-five dollar fir log. He had been doing one hell of a lot of work, pulling cables through the underbrush, but it was finally going to pay off.

Jake stood back and watched as his uncle dragged the log out into the clearing and Jake helped as they finally got it loaded onto the old army green, WWII era flatbed truck that had been converted to a log truck. Most of the green had disappeared, having been repainted in broad strokes by Oregon’s paintbrush, rain, replacing the Army green with the red of Oregon rust. Jake rode shotgun as his uncle double-clutched it through eight gears as they bounced their way out of the woods on the muddy logging road onto the county road into the small fishing town. Jake watched his uncle rev the old six-banger army truck up through the gears and double clutch it down again at each incline on their way down to the docks where they cueued with the other log trucks. A gigantic crane worked lifting logs from trucks ahead of them in the line. Jake watched as gigantic machines gripped the logs and stacked them in a vast area in wait to be reloaded by longshoremen onto ships which took them to Japan. There they would be cut into lumber or made into furniture and shipped either back to the United States or to other countries.

After all the logs on his uncle
’s truck were scaled and unloaded, his uncle went into the shack where the paperwork was filled out. Jake watched his uncle emerge from the shack with a yellow check in his hand.

“
How about a burger,” Jake’s uncle said and he slipped the check into the breast pocket of his red and black, plaid, flannel shirt. They headed to Pat and Len’s, a tiny café near the edge of town. Wendell pulled the truck to the side of the street and they climbed down from the cab and walked into the café and took seats on the swivel stools at the counter.

“
What’ll it be Wendell, you ol’ swindler?” Len, a man who obviously had his share of burgers and shakes, asked as he sidled as close to the counter as his stomach would allow, his belly bouncing with the laughter his lame joke caused.

“
A couple of burgers and fries and two chocolate malts.” Wendell said, ignoring the insult.

“
Plain or do you want those burgers
dee-luxe
?” Len said the word as if it were two. “
Dee-luxe
includes mustard and chopped onion.”

“
We’re celebrating, give us the works, make them de-luxe.” Wendell said.

“
You got it. Two
dee-luxe
burgers with mustard and onion coming right up.”

Jake sat at the counter watching as Len put two patties on the grill and, after the paddy started juicing up, flip it and put one half the bun on top of it and the other he placed on the grill to brown. He grabbed a fist of fresh cut potatoes and put them in a basket and lowered them into hot grease that bubbled up over the fries. As the burger and fries were cooking, Len set to work on the malts and put the metal container in the milk-shake machine and went back to the grill. When the burgers were done, Len slid the spatula
under the patty and put the burger and bun on the plate, grabbed a handful of chopped onions and spread them over the patty. On the other bun, he spread mustard and put that on top the onions and by then the fries were done. He slid the burgers in front of Jake and Wendell and poured two glasses full of the thick chocolate malt.

“
There you be, two
dee
-
luxe
burgers, fries and two chocolate malts,” Len said as he slid the meal onto the counter in front of Wendell. “Watch out for this ol’ bastard,” Len said, tilting his head toward Wendell and giving Jake a wink when he put the order in front of Jake. “Better count your money when you get home. Make sure it’s all there.”

“
Get the hell outa here,” Wendell said and Len chuckled and walked to the end of the counter.

As Jake remembered it, not word one was mentioned about his goddamn fifty-five dollars or that yellow check sticking out of his uncles breast pocket. Jake kept looking at the check, waiting. His uncle talked about a lot of crap but was silent on the matter of the check as they ate their burgers. The engine noise was too great to talk as the gears ground each time
Wendell down-shifted on the inclines on the ten miles to the logging site. They got into Wendell’s green pickup and headed for home. He stopped to let Jake off at his mailbox at the end of his drive. Jake hesitated long enough to make himself uncomfortable, in hopes his uncle would give him some cash. Not a damn word about the fifty-five smackeroos. He got out and walked the hundred yards through the drizzle up the rutted drive to his home.

Would it hurt the bastard to tear out one of those beige checks in that blue plastic checkbook he carried is shirt pocket, write Jake Forest in the
“pay to the order of” line and fifty-five and no one-hundreds in the “dollars” line? Not a goddamned bit.