"The Chess Game"
Reaching up to grab the mesh right under a cork, Jeb made three wide coils in an overlapping layup, and decided that that was going to be the way of it. Cold sea water ran down his arm when he reached, soaking his hooded sweatshirt. Means to an end, he thought, just a means to an end. The kid was yelling something at Jeb, there was a fish with its head stuck in the web. Jeb first tried to pull it through but its gills were wrapped. The skipper screamed encouragement, "What the fuck are you doing? We're losing fish here! Gawd almighty." With that as incentive, Jeb smacked the fish with his open hand sending it flying forward towards the fishhold.
He surveyed the cork line suspended from the power block, he had fallen behind, half of it was now laying haphazardly on the deck. He needed to slow this trip down, put it on a long wavelength, get control, focus, anticipate, get the lead out.
Suddenly, however, like a cold wind passing through his body, he retreated into that damp gritty cave he had become accustomed to, the
shadow's home. But even the shadow had never stood in his way when it came to putting it in overdrive, just the opposite, in fact. This was something different; this was cold-blooded fear, a clammy sense of panic, the kind that makes your body go weak. The kind he used to feel sometimes when a kid walking his neighborhood in Philly. This was the same fear he couldn't overcome when he realized his world with his daughter was about to fall apart.
But Philly was eons ago, he thought, and my daughter, well, that's not over with yet. But how can these two different sources of fear have anything in common? What marks them as the same? Since then I've faced storms on the Ocean and the Bering Sea without a flicker of fear, and I've been in some pretty hairy situations, there was never any time for it.
He was threatening to break out of his script, memories were flooding in from his own personal history, from all times and places, having the same connection, looking for comparison. But he believed and perceived his present situation to be a purely physical one, and there was nothing happening in that realm to inspire fear. On the contrary, he had been used to a surge of energy at times like these, an adrenaline rush would help to get him up on step, to be aggressive and manhandle whatever needed it; but it wouldn't come. Confusion made him hesitate. What's going on, he thought.
He almost gave up, something he had never done before, his pride as a worker had never allowed it. He pushed himself, moving in slow motion. It was like some wall, some strength he had worked to develop and inculcate, had broken down completely. He urged and prodded his sluggish body, swimming upstream through a river of molasses. Withdrawn and detached, he watched himself work as though he were a machine, pulling levers, extending appendages, grasping and tugging. A ten ton crane with rusted joints would have moved more smoothly. He was in first gear and the clutch was gone.
But it didn't matter, the game wasn't there; he was reacting instead of going out to it. He watched everything happening at once; the moving parts refused to merge together. The net was swooping up from the water, then down from the block twelve feet above, suspended from the end of the boom. The sounds of the diesel, the skiff and the higher-pitched hydraulics competed for his attention, taunting him, realizing somehow that he was hopelessly distracted. There was no ignoring their discordance as they fought for dominance. Beyond the block was the sky, shades of bluish grey clouds freckled with bright blue splotches varying in hue and density on out to the other side of the Strait.
When does physical and emotional intensity flip over to inner tunnel vision, he thought. The skipper and the kid were locked in battles with shapes and images of their own; the kid, scrambling to keep ahead of the wrath of the boss like a man being chased by a pack of dogs; the skipper, holding his dragons at bey by sheer arrogance. And what of Jeb?
He reached deeply into a bag reserved for emergencies. Fuck 'em all but six, save them for pallbearers, came a voice from within. You want to be cold, I'll show you cold, he mused, a surly smile showing on his mug. Guilt washed away, or cleared out, however one chooses to look at it. He grabbed the cork line imagining it was the skipper's throat. Three more loops, now going the other way.
They had not left a light on in the cabin, darkness is a door you can close behind you. They paused once, a few feet apart, stood straight, scanned forward and above, no looking back, then lit out over the slope to the right.
When they arrived at the two-room cabin, everything changed; the urgency, the adrenaline, the flight, all left behind, lost in the woods. They laughed as they filled the oil tank resting on its stand outside at the back of the cabin.
"We be WARM tonight," Bruce said, as he lit the stove. It took close to an hour for the old thing to put out enough heat where you could take your coat off. They had added to their stock of necessary amenities which included: a half-full bottle of Wild Turkey; cigarettes to last for a couple of days; bacon, eggs, coffee; the one thing Bruce hadn't sold or bartered away, a class act boombox; and, the quintessential Alaskan winter survival tool, a stash of decent pot. They were living like kings, and they knew it.
They sat on the couch sharing a joint and the Turkey waiting for the stove to do its thing. Bruce had plans, he always had plans, they didn't seem like much to his cronies, but it was something to talk about.
"Sanders has a 5K generator he wants to get rid of, he owes me a favor, we could strike a deal." That last word always nailed his partner, he pronounced 'deal' as 'dill,' like the pickle, plus it meant trouble. Bruce threw this out into the grey kerosene light, it hovered on its own; "SADE" was playing on the tape machine; the room had gotten somewhat warmer.
His partner sat back, taking a pull on the bottle of bourbon, feeling annoyed, trapped and personally agrieved. It sounded like work to him; Bruce's plans always ended up involving the entire group of seven inhabitants presently dwelling in what was referred to as "Hippie Cove," about a mile or so outside Cordova.
"We don't have anything that requires A.C.; we'd have to build a little house for it, its own little home, take care of it, feed it, nurture it through the tough times, worry over it, it's a can of worms, man, an expensive catastrophe waiting to happen," he said, leaning forward, elbows on knees, taking the joint out of Bruce's hand.
"Oh yea, we do. I'm getting a T.V. with a VCR built into it, you know what I mean, Kenny had one on his power scow," Bruce replied calmly, not defensively, like he was King Farouk buying a camel.
"A T.V. with a VCR," his partner said to the floor. The temperature was definitely rising amidst the smoky air. "Those things are battery operated, there's an option for A.C., but you don't need it."
"Well how the hell we s'posed to charge batteries, solar power?" Bruce said with a laugh. He was trying to set the hook. His modus operendi was to put the other guy in the undesirable position of arguing for exactly what Bruce wanted. His partner knew this but found the technique so fascinating as practiced by someone who otherwise couldn't think his way out of a paper bag that he actually enjoyed the action. He was always intensely curious as to not only where Bruce's mind would take them, but how they would get there; reason had nothing to do with it. "I have a perfectly good battery charger sitting over there in the corner collecting rust," he said with a lordly finality, pointing with the bourbon bottle.
His partner grabbed the jug and took the bait. "So, let me get this straight, we need a generator to run the charger to charge the batteries to run the T.V.. O.K., what batteries we be talkin' 'bout here? And why not hook the T.V. directly to the generator?"
"I HAVE a battery charger, I DON'T have a generator, that's why. If I had one, if WE had one, we could charge BATTERIES," Bruce stated demonstra- tively, shaking his head from side to side, more than a little annoyed at this blatant display of stupidity.
His partner had removed his scarf which now lay rolled lengthwise in his lap. His clenched fists were wrapped around it; he stared intently at the foot and a half of scarf between. "I don't want to charge batteries," he said through his teeth, "fuck a bunch of fuckin' batteries, I don't wanta deal with a bunch of mother fuckin' goddamn BATTERIES! Take your fuckin' charger and shove it up your ass; then plug the generator directly into that pea-sized brain of yours and see what kind of reception you get!"
Bruce looked at him sternly but with a smile in his eyes. "You'll change your tune when we're sitting here watching movies," he said evenly. "This'll become the place to be, the hangout for everybody, there'll be women banging on the door bringing movies with them. You'll see."
Throwing the scarf against the farther wall, his cabin mate responded, "So THAT'S what this is all about; you honestly, in your wildest dreams, believe that any woman worth a shit is going to come out here in the middle of the fucking winter, with this death stove belching carbon monoxide, to this broken down cabin inhabited by two crazy fuckin' drunks in order to watch MOVIES?" Exasperation has a face, Bruce recognized it easily.
Bruce looked shocked and incredulous. He remained completely still, for a moment. "The movies are just a come-on, man; we could watch porno flicks too. I don't want to spend the rest of the winter sitting out here with nothing to do but talk to you."
Finally he said something that made sense, something with which one could easily agree. His partner leaned away, tilting his head slightly in Bruce's direction, but avoiding eye contact. He was engaged in profound deliberation as he reviewed the conversation thus far; he was seriously considering the possibility that Bruce had taken a curve for the worse, around the corner with no tail lights visible.
Swallowing another mouthful of Turkey, he vented his conclusion, summarizing on the fly. "O.K., Sanders has a generator you think you can score; somehow, miraculously, you intend to come up with a T.V. set complete with VCR; we, that is, you, own a bona-fide, working representative of the battery charger family; O.K., pretending that all this will come to pass, where in the hell or how in the hell are we going to 'find' a bank of batteries?"
Calmly, unburdened by the inconvenience of forethought, Bruce drove on, "I thought you could work on that. I mean, here I am with a 5K generator, a T.V./VCR, AND, a charger, the least you could come up with is a couple of goddamn batteries for Christ's sake. You don't want to do shit, man. Get off your ass, you gotta keep it movin,' it be happenin.'" Leaning in confidential- like, lowering his voice to a warm whisper, he continued, "Wouldn't it be nice to be sitting here right now watching a flick?"
He was screwed. There was no escaping the torrent of reason nor the overbearing persona. Rising to warm his hands by the stove, he replied resignedly, "I'll work on it."
Next morning there was a loud knock on the door followed immediately by a bellow, "Wake the hell up, you sleeping beauties, the sun is splittin' the trees and I need a cigarette." The door opened with a kick, God's own reason-for-being stood in the doorway wearing a high mink hat, a polar bear coat down to his knees, home-made mukluks lined with moose hide, and a wild grin. His hands were in his jean's pockets revealing the twelve inch bowie knife strapped to his belt in a leather sheath. He was very fond of that knife.
Ron S. stepped in and kicked the door closed behind. "Where's Brucey?" he said playfully, mischief in his eyes, as he scanned the area for a smoke or pot or whiskey or whatever he could find.
Bruce's partner perused the room after he managed to crawl out of his bag laying on the floor and gingerly rise to the occasion. "Off on a quest, no doubt; an early starter, he." He ambled over to the stove to lift and shake the coffee pot; it was empty; he looked bewildered, anguished. Collapsing onto the couch, he painstakingly pulled his boots on, he had slept in his clothes, smoothed back his hair, rose somewhat unsteadily, went over to the basin of water laying on the all-purpose table, threw a few drops in his eyes, toweled briskly, and voila, he was ready for the day, almost.
"Here," he said hoarsely as he threw a small wooden box covered with scrimshaw to Ron.
Ron S. smoothly lowered himself into a lotus position on the floor in front of the stove. He slid the lid back deftly, smiled, took a pack of zig- zags from a vest pocket, and proceeded to roll the morning joint. "I got some espresso brewing if you'd like to come up for chess?" Ron was a bit older, and in some ways, a bit younger than the man crumpled next to him on the couch. He lived in the cabin on top of the hill, the highest point on this side of the ravine, a hundred yards upstream. There was a narrow creek that ran from the mountain down through the center of the Cove out to the Bay. It passed some fifty feet or so in front of where they now sat. In the fall, coho and pink salmon ran up it to their nesting grounds. Now, however, it was frozen solid, just a depression covered with snow.
"Let's go,..., coffee,..., must have coffee."
Ron's extravagant, one might say, excessive outpouring of cheer this morn was not only a tiny bit suspect, but grated on the nerves of the other man, hung-over and coffeeless, not to mention hungry, dirty, lonely, broke, and resolutely unambitious, the seven dwarfs of misfits everywhere.
Together they ambled and meandered through the snowy woods up the slight grade towards Ron's place. Large bluejays were the only colors on the landscape. Ron S. talked the whole way, about his oil paintings; about a walrus tusk he managed to score, clandestinely, as it were, to carve on; about the crazy-money he was trying to get from the government; on and on right up to his cabin door, finishing with a flowery commentary on the beautiful sunny sky.
The other man had simply walked behind, listening painfully to the hard snow crunch, feeling his body gradually regain a semblance of its lost glory, taking in the otherwise sparse still air. He was not yet ready to greet the morning, especially not the bright sky. It was 9:A.M. or thereabouts; it was daytime; these people had no clocks or need thereof.
His cabin had two rooms, Ron liked to say, one 'in' and one 'out.' It was about twelve foot square, two windows, a loft to sleep in, and a long narrow table set almost directly in front of the loft allowing for a walkway from the front door, the only door, to the other side. The long table was covered with projects: paintings, some oil, some water colors; chunks of antler and bone partially carved; more knives composed with bone handles made by him; and assorted finds and pieces of driftwood in interesting bizarre shapes.
On the far side, below the two-foot square window framing the bay and islands, was a heavy walnut table containing a drawer; its top, a diary of high times cast in stains, presently supported a chess board, each piece primly and precisely standing at attention in its square; two cups that looked remarkably like the ones they use at the Alaskan Bar; and a crystal ashtray, an heirloom of sorts. Two round-bottomed oak chairs with wire backs and legs sat adjacent. A few feet away was the cast-iron wood stove, an altar holding the precious coffee pot.
Ron strategically placed two chunks of wood in the stove, the hinges on the door did not squeek, he wouldn't allow it. He sat down in his favorite chair, closest to the stove, and lit the joint he had rolled in what now seemed like prehistory to the man, who seated himself in the other chair, back to the window.
"Coffee..," he said dryly, head lowered, cup in hand, arm extended.
"Here," Ron asserted in his raspy high-pitched voice, the combination worked creating a soothing effect, or perhaps it was just his native earthi- ness. He filled the cup for his friend with the blackest coffee known to man. "You must like living in hell; what are ya' doin' stayin' with Brucey? He drives me nuts, doesn't he drive you nuts? He drives ME nuts, I'll tell ya,' the way he goes on and on about nothin,' bullshit; he's got the brains of a walnut. I was talkin' to a squirrel the other day and they're fixin' to mug old Brucey. One scheme after another, and they never work, never; do you know of one he's come up with that's worked? Do ya'? Huh? Why don't you move into old Rick's cabin, it's just sitting there, empty."
Confrontation time, and after only one sip of coffee; the man withdrew into himself, scrambling to stay afoot, jumping from one ocean-borne sheet of ice to another, he could not fall in; he recovered as nimbly, unnoticed. He was being put on the spot, asked to make a major life-altering decision, perform brain surgery on the Pope, blow up an orphanage; it made him uncomf- ortable; he'd rather just get high and drink coffee; it's all he could handle and all he wanted to.
Fishing season would be here soon, then he'd be gone, somewhere, the circuit. He didn't want to get involved with old Rick; more than that though, the idea left him afraid, uncertain. The prospect of living alone, being on his own, insurmountable; he could not encompass the fact of it in his mind. The will power necessary to work with an other, no matter how trivial the pursuits, was what kept him sane, this he was sure of.
The fragments of his former robust self were mingled with memories and fantasies until they were indistinguishable, inseparable. The cause of what he regarded as a breakdown of his core identity, his ability to control events, was something he could, he continued to believe, given sufficient reflection and introspection, put his finger on, and he was determined to find that cause. He wanted to spend his available energy on recovery, not full-scale home maintenance. It was better to have a partner right now, to share the effort, even if it might be a greater effort to keep the friendship together.
"Yea, he drives me nuts too. Is that new?" he asked, shifting the spotlight to an oil painting of the nearby Bay and islands as seen from the hill above. It had mountain status but barely, you could climb it in less than an hour by switchbacks.
"Last week I climbed Mount Eyak; this was a drawing; I painted it from that. What you got is stage fright. You keep making excuses why you can't go see your daughter. You want things to be the way you want 'em, but that's not going to happen; no miracles in THIS life. You know as well as I do, if you really wanted to, the way you are, you could just go, deal with it, you know, you know, you know."
'The way you are,' he'd heard that expression before from others; what is it they see, thought the man. After a pause, feigning consideration for the advice, he said, "Good coffee; ready to lose your ass?"
"All right, I'll shut up, you know I'm right, though. A person has to want to, that's the bottom line. Take white, I'll let you make the first mistake. I ain't givin' no quarters THIS day."
"Who asked; you're bogartin'; I need to elevate my perceptual array beyond the scope of mundane considerations."
"To beat me today, you better take the express elevator. I found something yesterday you might be interested in. We don't have anywhere to be or go, so what the hell?"
"What?" he said, eyes narrowed, voice a little impatient in a good- natured way. Ron S. liked being mysterious, he thought it added to his aura, as if he needed anything extra.
Teasingly, his face mocking intense solemnity, he slowly pulled the drawer of the table part way open. "Are you sure?" he asked, stretching that last word out for all it was worth.
"Open the fucking drawer, would ya'," replied the man, himself countering the taunt with mock anger.
Ron S. reached in and retrieved a palm-sized ivory box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. It's appearance did not suffer by the light coating of wood black from Ron's hands; on the contrary, it accentuated the grain.
He placed it on the table as though it contained the secret of the Universe. "Open it," he insisted, appearing genuinely insistent.
The inside was covered in purple velvet besides which was nothing save two bluish squares of paper about a quarter inch square.
"One for me, one for you; it's all in the wrist," said Ron S. as he plucked a piece from the velvet and placed it in his mouth with a finality born of a life of quick and carefree decision making.
The man hesitated. The last time he had eaten any acid was in San Francisco, about a million light years ago. Then, as opposed to now, he was in control of his emotions and his mind. He had helped others get through bad trips while on acid himself, he had had that much strength. Now, however, he wasn't sure. There was that word again, 'sure'; he considered it, such a simple little word meaning so much; he looked at each letter individually; wondered why he hesitated, then wondered why he bothered to wonder in the first place. Did he need a workout? He rationalized: maybe it might help me understand...
"Sure," he said agreeably, taking the other piece and placing it on his tongue with the tip of his index finger. He held it there for an infinitely long time, holding his breath; then closing his mouth, he swallowed it, washing it down with a glug of coffee. "What's the skinnies on the time differential?" he asked dryly.
"About immediately, if you haven't eaten; your move."
The man rose to remove his coat, and draped it over the back of his chair. Ron S. produced the small wooden box containing the pot and manufac- tured another joint. The game was afoot.
Their style of play ensured longevity. Finesse and subterfuge were everything; no wanton destruction or trading pieces; no clocks; the play was the thing. They had become evenly matched over the course of time, taking turns winning to the point where it no longer mattered.
The sun had not yet reached its apex; the day was yet to be. There were bare sounds here in Ron S's little cabin on the hill; fire crackling occasionally; coffee pouring into cups; matches struck to light cigarettes; long deep breathing; chess pieces lightly touching down; the still before the storm, perhaps, mused the man.
Neither had moved from their chairs for close to forty-five minutes. They had not yet finished their first game, although the end was near. They also had not said a word. The man turned his head to study the view through the window: snow on the ground, on the branches of the spruce, on the hilly island beyond, a whiteness pure, clean, simple, uncluttered, peaceful, serene, captivating; why could he not allow himself to revel in it, to forget and be here, complete?
He spotted a bluejay on a low branch fifty or more yards to the west. He watched it leap from the branch, stretch its wings and swim through the air. With each beat of its wings it pushed hard against the viscous thickness of the mass of engulfing air, weaving through the branches of other trees at full speed, first to the left, then, the right, never touching a leaf. It performed this high speed ballet several times back and forth, as though it was showing off for the man's benefit, to demonstrate its fantastic skill and nerve, its fearlessness.
Suddenly, it shifted direction to look directly at the man eyeball to eyeball. Varying not so much as an inch side to side, it glided expertly through the intervening branches, an accomplished master of the air ways. Its size increased in stages as though it were passing critical points along the route, doorways of differentials, layers, passages unknowable to humans.
Not ten feet from the window, at breakneck speed, it flattened its wings tilting them ever so slightly upward to glide over the roof showing its white belly and outstretched wings; the man could see each and every feather crisply outlined, working in perfect harmony; there was no sound.
The man returned his attention to the game. He was holding a pawn in his left hand, rubbing it, turning it over slowly, feeling its soft smooth warm wood texture. It had no discernible weight; he wanted to put it down, but it was strangely soothing. He felt foolish holding it, but he needed to. He tried placing it on the table but as he did so a powerful sensation of forlorn loss overwhelmed him. He continued to caress it absentmindedly while he took a sip of coffee. The coffee had a strong brackish aftertaste; he followed it down his throat to his empty belly, feeling it coat his stomach lining, working to eat tiny holes in the delicate tissue. The sweet aroma of spruce burning in the stove was extraordinarily sensual, helping to relax his stiff worn joints from the inside out with each intake of breath, permeating his entire body with a comforting touch.
It was Ron's move. The remaining pieces on the board formed a pattern he could identify, no individual one stood out as a focus of attention. Each move he had made had altered the pattern, of course, he realized that, now; the configuration was everything. He looked at what Ron had created, it was like an open hand centered around his king. The man felt claustrophobic for the briefest of moments, then it passed as Ron moved one of his bishops. Soundlessly, he placed it in the precise center of a square, carefully leaned back, put his hands behind his head, smiled and whispered, "Checkmate."
The man's king was in a crossfire of opposing bishops, Ron's knight blocked his only escape. The rearing horse was showing its teeth, snorting; the bishops' robes shimmered. "'The Red and The Black,' by Stendahl," mused the man out loud, a book he had read among many of its ilk in his scuffling, idealistic days when he imagined himself a student of the human condition, a renaissance man, a comprehensivist. Names of other authors emerged from the recesses and closed off cubbieholes of his mind to awareness bringing with them a point of view he had not entertained since heaven froze over.
"Have you ever read 'The Idiot,' by Dostoevsky," he asked Ron S., surprised at the sound of his own voice, a younger sound, long lost and forgotten. He went on, as much to revel in this delicious sound as to converse, "I had no trouble identifying with the main character, Prince Myshkin, I read it three times. Ever read it?"
Ron had gotten up to retrieve an armload of wood from the porch after declaring victory, leaving the door open. The cool thin air was blocked by the dense warm air of the room. Maybe it'll rain at the doorway, the man thought. The fire needed food. Ron S. busied himself stoking it; then turned to the job of building another pot of espresso. He moved deliberately as though each step demanded full focus, yet he glided effortlessly through the routine. His presence could never be ignored at any time; now, it smoldered from within, bubbling out like magma, blurring the edges of his profile.
He carefully placed the pot onto the stove, slightly off-center, then stood back seeming to assess the aesthetics of 'silvery pot resting on black iron stove' like the artist he was, mesmerized. It would take some time for the water to heat, this was camper coffee at its finest. As though suddenly released from the tableau's embracing spell, he turned full to the man, his face wide and lightly reddish in hue, hair corkscrewed in all directions. "No, but I've seen 'The Wizard of Oz' three times," he proclaimed, accompanied by deep belly laughs reverberating and rippling through the air as thick as molasses tsunamis.
Startled, expecting something else entirely, the man backed up, perceptually, and took in the larger picture, detail-wise, of which there was much. He sensed a crust of hardness covering his skin, and it wasn't just dirt; armorous, stiff, impervious; separating him from the world. It was all that kept him from dissipating into everything around, including Ron S.. How long had it existed unknown to him? Days? Years? Forever? Was it the sum total of his lifelong experiences filtering the incoming, this crust? Was it his protective barrier, a micron-thin veneer of resistance? Did it work both ways denying him access to knowing, to feeling, to loving, to growing?
The cabin seemed to shrink, threatening to squash them both; they shared this unspoken awareness, glancing at the walls and ceiling hurriedly. Had Ron's laughter disturbed and awakened the cabin? Did it see its chance, finally, to overthrow its masters? Was it resentful, returning from the dead? Was it no more possible than the man's dead self? Spacetime seeks a vacuum; Ron and the man were but empty shells acting on the plane of seeming. Together they asserted their wills, gathering force from some unseen and unknowable dimension wherein they truly lived and had their beings. What they sensed was mere projection, including time and history.
It became crowded, too many things too close together. The pressure mounted demanding internal strength to equalize it. Breathing became difficult in the thick, dense air; it was almost liquid; there didn't seem to be enough to go around, in fact; they would soon run out and implode allowing the cabin to rush into the vortex, a gravity well, a black hole of compacted and crushed electrons compressing into a singularity, the birthplace of a new universe.
They couldn't let this happen; the fate of the World rested on their shoulders. Communicating wordlessly, they realized the severe magnitude of their predicament. The stove sizzled; the new wood popped noisily; the man put the pawn, slumbering in his left hand, gently on the table. It was time to make a move.
"'Chainsaw Massacre,' there's another one," Ron said, nodding with eyes wide. "Let's knock down a tree; I'm running out of burnables." Not waiting for a response, he grabbed his coat, spun toward the open doorway and was outside in three strides.
Not a good idea, thought the man, feeling the walls and ceiling retreat reluctantly, vanquished, constrained by higher powers and physics. No big deal. It wasn't the first time he had stood triumphant at the gate separating matter from antimatter, policing spacetime implosions was old hat.
He vacillated, sipped the remains of his now cold coffee, lit a smoke, glanced out the window, examined the chess board, the ashtray, scanned the cabin, crossed his legs, listened to the wood burn. Tears came, he knew not from where, large warm salty drops of tears; he wiped them away, took a deep breath, then felt concern for his friend.
A chord had been struck galvanizing his nebulous will and straightening his spine. That was what he needed to feel, a part of him that had yet survived the dissolution; it worked to rouse him from the depths. He rose to test his legs for the first time in an hour; carefully, calculatingly, he slid into his coat, zipping it in one swift motion. He breathed deeply again, lowered his head somewhat to better plow through the air, and charged outside without bothering to prepare his mind for whatever might happen. What the hell, he thought, nobody'll miss us.
The doorway was a portal, a membrane, an envelope of time; he heard the surface tension pop as he passed the frame, the frame of reference. He had been in a bubble of warm air, he mused; now he was out in space, a space too large, at first. The sunlight bouncing off the snow forced a recoil. He stood on the tiny porch looking down the hill, taking it in a section at a time.
There were no birds in sight; no breeze to chill the bone; no sounds of any kind. He could hear Ron S., standing some ten feet away, breathing. In the summer, this area was overrun with tourists and fair-weather Alaskans; but not now, now all was still and quiet for which he was grateful.
He had squinted against the burn of the sun upon entering Ron's designated 'other room.' But gradually he was able to accept more and more, incrementally, until, with eyes wide, he lowered his shoulders, put hands on hips, and, with a cigarette dangling from his lips, studied the wildman before him.
Ron S. was scrutinizing the teeth of the saw resting on the splitting block, round file in hand, occasionally applying it to a tooth. Without looking up he said, "All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I wonder if Gene's home, I guess I don't care, though." Gene lived in a cabin at the bottom of the east side of Ron's hill, right next to the stream. He loathed machinery of any kind preferring to chop down trees with a double-bladed ax with which he was quite proficient.
The Industrial Revolution chainsaw was about to rend the stillness, however; shards of frozen silence would be splintering off in all directions; thunder bolts of angry aggressive noise, blanketing the entire Universe, changing its nature forever. Blue-black plumes of gas and oil exhaust, filling nostrils and lungs, coating the pure white snow, feeding the birds. And we would be completely responsible, thought the man. Well, not completely, it was God's fault for letting Man invent the damn thing in the first place. It was easy to shift blame, responsibility; it was necessary, in fact, elsewise the weight would be intolerable.
The man took a deep breath of cold glacier air. The silt in the water of the Bay gave it a heavy blue-grey cast; it was an ancient sea he looked at, living in its own time, detached and isolated from the earth's changes. Jason and his Argonauts might come around the corner in their long-boat at any moment, oars plowing the water, a drum beating cadence.
Ron S. stood beside the bolt of wood, chainsaw in hand, studying the closely packed spruce, one tree at a time. Forty thousand years ago, thought the man, two like us stood on an ice and snow covered hill somewhere in present day Europe scanning the terrain, looking for a tree to chop down with stone axes; the fire in the cave was everything. It took little effort to slide into prehistory, peel away the layers of civilizations with Ron dressed as he was in furs and hides. He was a cro-magnum holding a twentieth century cutting tool.
He turned his head towards the man on the porch, a mischievous smile and eye glint indicated a target had been found. He raised his right arm to point the way while still smiling at the man who half expected Ron to grunt. Instead, he was curiously surprised to hear him say, "See that one by the trail leanin' at an angle?"
I knew it, thought the man, I knew it. The only tree around that was uniquely different. It had started straight, like the others, but its need for room, for sun to grow had, with chemical knowledge mysterious and more ancient than Man Himself, changed its original course, bending it at a forty-five degree angle with the Earth. How could it change direction like that? As a single tree it would have to do something like 'inform' each cell from the down side up to grow at an infinitesimally greater rate than the one next to it, the cells on the topside growing fastest. How the hell does it 'know' to do that? And it's not just an individual tree; it's a member of a clone of trees, this whole wooded area is one group-tree mind controlling and administering the needs of each and every member-cell that make it up, wheels within wheels, circles within circles.
"I think it's wrong to kill that tree, Ron," the man said, emotion in his voice. "It'd be like saying, 'hey, look at that guy, he looks different, let's kill 'im.' I don't like it, it's bad juju."
Ron S. glanced annoyedly at the man for a moment, then off towards the Bay. "Oh, no," he said, shoulders slumping, anguished. Ron always did do a superlative anguish. "That tree called out to me; it practically shouted, 'over here, come get me, I'll keep you warm, come, please, take me.'" Ron tried to appear serious, then burst out laughing, helpless.
"Ohhh, that tree talked to you, huh? You're a shaman now, conversing with rocks and flora."
"I don't know Flora, and if she's a friend of yours, she's probably got some disease. Yea I talk to the trees. Some of them are interesting, they got something to say, alot more interesting than most of the people I know. Others, boring, nothing, full o' shit, like Brucey. Right before I cut 'em I say, 'hi, tree, how are things? How are the squirrels treatin' you? Aren't you cold standing out here all night? Wouldn't ya' like to come up to my place and get warm?' And a tree might say, 'well, that's awfully nice of you, Ron, thanks, don't mind if I do. Got any coffee?' And I say, 'sure thing, wanta help me make it?' The trees around here are very agreeable; they're just trying to get along like the rest of us."
The man stared at Ron S.. The sunlight from the south was casting soft shadows through the woods. He noticed that Ron did not have one; this fact absorbed his attention. He had already forgotten what Ron had said, in one ear and out the other, but to Ron it appeared the man was pondering the long and short of it all.
Exasperated, Ron dropped the saw. He blurted out, gesturing wildly, "it's the easiest one around, a straight cut, no having to worry over where it might crash,..., it's just a fucking tree," he implored. "Why are you always doing this to me. Can't we just go kill a goddamn tree, cut it up and burn it without you going off into some hippie-dippie druid bullshit? We're locked in a struggle for survival; this tree calls out to us, US, calling to us, it's destiny, like a piece of fruit, it's OUR tree. You got mo problem with pickin' fruit? What's the fuckin' deal? We're all part of the Earth; that tree is part of the Earth; together we mean something, divided we fall."
"Sounds more like 'TOGETHER we fall,' for the tree. You're being insensitive; why are you so insensitive? That tree has been doing its thing for twenty, fuck, I don't know, thirty years; birds build nests in it; squirrels live in it, raise their young; spores, it lets out seeds, year in, year out; they fly off in the wind, searching for new ground; a whole ecology of life and being revolving around the very existence of that one, lone, bent, heroic tree; the whole history of Life's struggle to gain a foothold on the Earth manifest in wood. And, YOU, you, Ron S. come out of the fucking blue on a cold winter's day and casually decide to murder it. I can't believe it, Ron; It's unthinkable; I can't fuckin' believe it, an artist, an ARTIST," the man finished, shaking his head.
Ron S. stood stoically during this diatribe, still and mute, staring at the ground like a kid. Suddenly, eyes fixed on his hands, he said, each word articulated for effect, "I am going to kill that mother fucker right now; and when that's done, I am going to clear cut the entire fucking forest from stem to stern."
Without hesitation, the man shot back, "All right, let's get 'er done; we're burnin' daylight. But first, how 'bout that coffee?" The man turned and reentered the warm bubble space.