Evan Hunter: Sons

Downstairs, I could hear the others in the living room. Someone had turned off the Victrola and put on the radio. An announcer was broadcasting from The Loop, describing the crowds of people in the street. I took out my handkerchief. She was lying crosswise on the bed, one arm up and folded, the back of her hand against her closed eyes. Her legs were still spread. I handed her the handkerchief, and she murmured, “Thank you, Will.”

She sat up then and clasped her bra, though I couldn’t remember having unclasped it, and then she turned for me to zip up the back of the black dress, and said, “Will, I hope you don’t think...” and I immediately said, “Of course not.” Downstairs, the announcer was saying it was four minutes to midnight. Someone had given out noisemakers and the kids were already beginning to use them as the redhead and I came into the living room.

Just after midnight, I went into the kitchen and dialed my home number. My father answered on the first ring. I didn’t even pretend I was Western Union with a message for Mr. Bertram Tyler.

“Pop?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Happy New Year. And happy birthday.”

“Thank you,” my father said.

Mama always said, “Bertram, we’ve only got two seasons here in Wisconsin, winter and the Fourth of July,” but I never minded the cold, and I didn’t mind it now. I was working late and alone in the forest because I’d taken an hour off that morning to ride one of the wagons into Eau Fraiche. With two thousand men working in the bush during cutting season, seven supply wagons made the trip to town every Friday, coming back loaded with beans and butter and coffee and potatoes and molasses and eggs and beef. Flour was still a problem because there’d been an epidemic of black stem rust in 1916, followed by another poor wheat season last year, and what with trying to keep France and England supplied with grain, there was a severe shortage all over the country, not only in Eau Fraiche. The same applied to pork and sugar, which the Allies desperately needed. I couldn’t remember having had a strip of bacon since I began working at the camp, and last year we were actually pouring corn syrup into our coffee to sweeten it.

I’d asked Hal, the head-chopper, if I could take a few hours off that morning because I had something to do in town. I didn’t tell him what it was I had to do, but I think he knew what I was up to because he just grinned and clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Sure, Bert, you just take all the time you need.” As it turned out, I hadn’t needed much time at all. In fact, I was able to catch the first loaded wagon back to camp. Still, I’d lost an hour’s work, and when you were cutting pulpwood, you got paid by how many cords of wood you cut, and not by how much time you spent in town. The standard cord was eight feet long, four feet high, and four feet wide. A scaler measured each pile of logs at the end of the day, figured out how many cords they added up to, and that way was able to tell how much pay you had coming. Anyway, I thought I might still be able to hit my quota if I could bring down the tree I’d been working on.

The tree was a huge spruce, probably there since the days of old Frenchy La Pierre, towering up against a sky brittle with dusk. I’d cleared a working space around the tree, clipping off the brush and saplings, holding the ax in one hand near the point of balance and cutting very close to the ground. I’d hung the ax myself because I never did trust factory-hung axes, and I’d also tapered the blade — a single-bit Michigan — on a wet grindstone, and then honed it razor-sharp, taking off the wire edges; a dull ax is much more dangerous than a sharp one, that was something you learned very quickly in the woods. I’d also cut off all the low-hanging branches to give me plenty of swinging room, and I’d checked the direction of fall, to make sure there weren’t any widow-makers on any of the surrounding trees. I was ready to start my undercut now, and as I moved around to the side toward which the tree would fall, I looked up at the sky and saw a pair of geese silhouetted against the deepening red, and saw my own breath blowing white out of my mouth, and I grinned and picked up the saw and began making the horizontal cut, and thought again of what I’d done that morning.

Nancy wasn’t going to like it, that was for sure. I couldn’t wait to tell her about it, and yet I was really sort of seared to tell her. She was five feet four inches tall, thinner than a rake handle, but when she got mad, thunder could boom out of those green eyes of hers. I knew all the arguments she’d give me (even though it was too late now) because I’d given myself the very same arguments all this past week before finally deciding this morning to go over to Eau Fraiche and get the thing done. There were some things a man had to do, that was all, but I guessed Nancy wasn’t going to understand that too well. All I knew was I was eighteen years old, and I was strong and healthy, and I wanted to do my part. It was as simple as that.

(When did you all of a sudden get so thick with Mr. Wilson? Nancy would ask. It was you who said Wisconsin should go all-out for Hughes, which we most surely did, and now you’re thick as the devil and the old green snake, how do you explain that, Bert?)

Well, there was no explaining it, I guessed. It was just something you had to do, that was all.

I freed the saw and picked up my ax. There was perhaps half an hour of light left, oh, maybe just a bit longer, and with luck I could have my notch cut in half an hour, and then I could start on my backcut. I was beginning to doubt I would get any bucking done before dark, but if I could at least get her felled and limbed, why then I could get to work with the bow saw in the morning, and cut her into log lengths then. I began to chop. She was a big tree, so I decided to make two smaller notches, working them eventually into a single large one. I worked with an easy steady swing, my legs widespread, my right hand just above the bulge at the end of the ax handle, sliding my left hand up close to the head on the upstroke, and then toward my right hand again on the downstroke. I kept one corner of the blade always free of the wood, giving it a slight twist each time to free the chip and release the bit. I put each stroke exactly where I wanted it, the chips falling away yellow-white and thick into the snow. I took off my jacket after twenty minutes of hard chopping, working in my sweater now, swinging the ax in long steady arcs, joining the two notches and making a big notch that slanted down at a forty-five-degree angle toward the saw cut.

The sky was streaked with purple, the trees looming high against it, the snow tinted a fainter lavender. From far away in one of the bunkhouses, I heard a lumberjack’s laughter cracking across the snowbound silence. A dog began barking and then was still.

I began my backcut.

Maybe I could help Nancy to see it my way. There was talk around, I’d tell her, that they were going to lower the age to eighteen by June, so what difference would a few months make? Wasn’t it better to get into the thing now, and help get it over with, so we could later go on with our normal lives? Wasn’t that better, Nance?

Bert, she would say, they can kill you clear up to your navel, is that what you want them to do?

I was using the bow saw for my backcut, but I was beginning to think I’d made a mistake, she was much too big to fell this way. What I needed was a crosscut saw with two men on it. At least, that’s the way it looked to me now, with darkness fast coming on and the bow saw sinking into the trunk far too close to its frame without getting anywhere near enough to my undercut. I needed only an inch or two of holding-wood to serve as my hinge when the tree fell, but here I was almost up tight against the frame of the saw now, and still three inches away from my undercut; nope, it wasn’t going to work. I eased the saw free and wondered what I should do. Suppose I left her this way, and a strong wind came along and toppled her over tomorrow morning when some poor fellow was out honing his ax and never suspecting somebody had left a tree hanging? I decided to try poling her over, and if that didn’t work, I’d head back for the bunkhouse and get some help.