I didn't have any real need to check them logs. I told myself that. Even if they were covered with mist I still knew them damn near by heart. I'd watched them stand as a forest when I first took a drive up to see if I wanted to make a bid, seen them all thick and green, like a big piece of green herring-bone wool. I'd watched them mown from the sky. I'd bucked and chokered and yarded and loaded them. I'd heard the way the branding hammer sounded against them with a woody thock when I knocked a big crooked S into the end of each log; I'd heard them rumble off the truck into the water. . . . Still, listening to them out of sight there some way made me doubt what I knew. I wanted to grab that layer of mist by the edge and jerk it up for just a moment, like jerking a carpet up from the floor so you could see the pattern underneath. I wanted to look at them. For just a second. Like I maybe needed the sight to reassure me--not that they were still there--but that they were . . . what? Still as big as I remembered? Could be. Maybe I wanted to see that they hadn't been gradually worn and eroded by the continual rubbing and grinding, down to the size of saplings and pile posts.
Andy got himself settled. I shook myself to try to get shut of my foolishness and turned back to the motor. But just as I started to throttle the motor Joe Ben gave a hiss like a snake and grabbed me by the sleeve and pointed off up river.
"There, Hank, there," he whispered. "What'd I tell you?"
I looked. A lone honker, separated by the storm just like Joe'd figured, was flying dead for us. Everybody froze. We watched him come, stretching his long black neck from side to side as he searched around him, flapping along, honking over and over the same question. "Guh-luke?" he would honk, then be still and listen a while before calling again. "Guh-luke?" . . . not exactly afraid, not the way I've heard other geese call when they were lost. Different. Almost human, the way he was asking it. "Guh-luke . . . ? Guh-luke . . . ?"
It was a sound like . . . I remember thinking . . . a sound kind of like Joe's little girl Squeaky made the time she come running in from the barn hollering that her special cat was in the bottom of the milk can drowned and where was everything? She wasn't crying or carrying on, just hollering my cat got drowned where is everybody? She wouldn't calm down till she'd gone all over the whole house and talked to everybody and seen everything. That was the same notion I got hearing that lost goose honking: that he wasn't so much just asking where the lost flock was--he was wanting to know where the river was, and the bank, and everything hooked up with his life. Where is my world? he was wanting to know, and where the hell am I if I can't locate it? He had lost his way and was out there flying the river, out of his head looking for it. He was trying to check around quick and get everything in its place, like Squeaky had needed to do when she'd lost her cat, and like me wanting to see them logs again. Only with me, I couldn't figure what I thought I'd lost: no cats that I could think of, and I don't know as I was missing a flock . . . or ever even had a way. But I still knew the feeling. . . .
While I was studying about this, I heard Joe whisper, "Meat in the pot," and saw him reach down into the fog for the shotgun. (The black barrel of the gun comes up out of the mist. The goose doesn't see us. He keeps coming.) I watched Joby run his finger down the muzzle, checking for a mud clog--an unconscious habit that anybody picks up after years of squatting in a muddy duck blind. He drew in his breath . . . (The goose swells closer to us. I move my face inside the rubber poncho hood to see if the kid is watching. He ain't even turned toward the goose. He's turned looking at my face. And he's grinning.) . . . then, just as the goose comes within range, I said, "Forget it." "What?" Joby said. His jaw dropped a foot. I said again, as casual as I could, "Forget it," and gunned the motor out into midstream. The goose veered sharply overhead, making a slight whistling sound with his wings, he was so close. Poor Joe just sat there with his jaw hung open. I knew he'd be pretty disappointed--bagging a Canada honker is a pretty big deal; more buck deer are killed every year in Oregon than Canada geese, because geese don't decoy worth beans and if you set out to slip up on a flock in a field you're in for about a three-day crawl through the mud with the wily bastards always keeping just a hair out of shotgun range . . . pretty near the only chance you got is to luck onto one, and that happens about as much as lucking onto a pirate chest. So Joby had every right to be disappointed. Anybody would, if someone screwed up his first and maybe only chance for a honker.
He sat there watching that big pearl-colored bird fading off into the sky till it was out of sight. Then he turned and just looked at me. "What's the sense?" I said to him; I turned away from his look and watched the bow split the fog. "We couldn't of located him in this crappy fog even if you did knock him down, could we now?"
He still just sat there with his trap open, looking for all the world like Harpo Marx.
"Well, Jesus H. Christ!" I said. "If I'd known you wanted to just kill a goose I wouldn't of stopped you! But I thought I heard you say 'bag' one. If you're just looking to kill something, maybe you'd like to go out on the jetty this weekend with the 30-06 and shoot some of the seals playing in the bay? Okay? Or dynamite some trout in the sloughs, maybe?"
That got him. Les Gibbons used to dynamite the deep sloughs above our place and gather the fish in a boat. Once Joe and me skin-dived to the bottom of one of these holes after a blast, and there was dead trout piled up down there by the hundreds; only about one out of fifty floated up. So when I mentioned dynamiting fish, that really got him. He closed his mouth and looked sheepish. "I didn't think, Hankus," he said. "An' I forgot how you hate to see a animal killed an' lost." I didn't say anything and he added. "Especially the way you feel about the Canada goose race. I just didn't follow your reasoning right off. I got all in a boil seeing him. Wasn't thinking good. I understand now."
I left it at that, with him thinking he understood a reasoning that I could barely follow myself. How could I expect him to understand that my feeling toward the goose as a race was doing a slow but sure turnover--what with squadron after squadron of the bastards ruining my sleep--and that it was this one particular lost goose that I didn't want shot because he sounded like he was asking Where is everything? Where is everything? . . . how the hell could I expect poor rattleheaded Joby to understand that?
In town the arrival of the Asian flu only served to bring the citizens more tightly together in their campaign: "Another cross to bear but if we just all stick together in the fight any cross comes along will surely be bearable." Snuffling and coughing, they continued to stick together. Eyes rimmed with misery and backs bent beneath a whole truckload of crosses, they trudged to front doors of Stampers living in town and reminded wives to tell their husbands to let Hank Stamper know what folks thought about him trying to set himself up against friends and neighbors, against his very home town! "No man is a island, honey," they reminded the wives; and the wives told the husbands, "No woman is going to stand for this sort of injustice, I don't care if you do lose your Exmas bonus!" and the husbands phoned the house up the river to say the Asian flu made it impossible to come to work.
And when all the Stamper wives had laid down the law, and all Stamper husbands in town had contracted the flu, then the citizens carried the battle to the enemy himself. "No sir, no man is a goddam island," they let Hank know on the phone, "not you nor nobody!"--all hours of the night. Viv stopped answering the phone during the day (she had already stopped going into Wakonda to shop, and was even experiencing chilly stares when she went as far away as Florence); she even asked if they might not have their phone disconnected. Hank only grinned and replied, "What for? So's all my friends and neighbors can say, 'Stamper has had to shut his phone off; we must be getting to him'? Kitten, we don't want to get our good friends an' neighbors all het up over nothing, do we?" He had acted so amused and nonchalant about the whole business that Viv couldn't help wondering if he actually meant it. Nothing seemed to get to him. He seemed more impervious than ever, even to that flu bug; he snuffled a little bit, naturally (he always snuffled a little bit, though, b
ecause of his broken nose), and sometimes he came home sounding hoarse (from hollering at the rest of the sick slackers, he told her in a joking boast), but he obviously wasn't nearly as ill as the others. Everybody else in the house, from the baby all the way to the old man, was having stomach aches and lung congestion. Nothing serious--Lee got better and worse; Joe Ben took three aspirins when his sinuses hurt him, then swore off artificial medicines as soon as the headache let up enough for him to remember his church's doctrine of faith-healing; Jan spent a night vomiting out the window to the dogs below . . . nothing serious, but everybody had been bitten deep enough by the bug going around to show a few symptoms. Not Hank. Hank just kept chugging along day after day without signs of a let-up. Like a machine. She couldn't help wondering sometimes whether he was made out of flesh and blood and bones, like the rest of them, or out of workboot leather and Diesel fuel, and blackjack oak dipped in creosote.
Viv wondered at Hank's uncanny strength; the old man bragged about it every chance he had to get to town; even Lee had occasion to doubt the existence of the weakness that he was dedicated to prove, to his brother and himself:
A further possibility, Peters, is that I may be holding back my Sunday punch because I am afraid that Hank will not be fazed by it. Thus far my belief in the iron man's vulnerability is based only on a few uncertain glimpses of rust spots. What if these spots are the whole of his weakness? What if I had been wrong in my whole precept and he actually turns out to be invulnerable? It would be like working for years developing as ultimate a weapon as one could conceive, only to find that the target was completely unscathed by it. Such a prospect might give a fellow pause, don't you think?
In fact, it was Joe Ben, whose faith in Hank's invulnerability had been a long-time joke, who was the first to glimpse for certain those spots of rust. He saw these spots in the way Hank brooded over his supper coffee, in the sharp way he spoke to Viv or the kids, in a dozen places. Joe tried to avert his gaze, and most of the time managed to smother his misgivings under surges of enthusiasm, but it was these same surges that began to gradually reveal to Hank the very misgivings Joe was trying to smother.
They were all tired and edgy with overwork. By the end of that week there were only five left working: Hank and Joe, Andy, Lee, and, surprisingly, John. John was the only outsider relative left (Andy was never considered with the "outsider folks"; while he was a more distant relation than most, his absence from the job would have surprised everyone as much as Joe Ben's would have), and Joe could see that John was beginning to get the itch to join the other defectors. The five of them had worked doggedly all that day, falling and cleaning up the few logs still standing in their spread, until they were numb with cold and fatigue. They had finished all the cutting and hauling; nothing was left but the clearing required by the Forest Service. Not the sort of work for a trucker, Joe knew, but he knew as well that Hank needed the help of everyone, including John. They were all standing near Hank at the spar tree, looking out across the slopes they had cut. It was already growing dark, the night drifting down with the rain. John made a circle to check his load, then mounted to the cab and waited. Joe watched Hank draw at the cigarette angling out of the corner of his mouth.
"Take us most of tomorrow to doze the place clean and set the slash to burning," Hank said. One eye was squinted against the cigarette's looping smoke. "We'd of got to it today if we'd had one other man helpin'. That means we're gonna be short a day an' maybe have to work this weekend."
Joe watched the others. "Andy, you make it this weekend?" Hank asked while he continued to look down the slope. "I know that'll be twelve days straight for you, without a let-up, but whatcha say?"
The boy was leaning against the muddy side of the carrier, stubbing out a hole in the ground with the toe of his boot. He lifted a shoulder in a shrug and said without looking up, "I can make it."
"Good goin'." Hank turned toward the log truck, where John sat looking straight ahead through the clicking wipers on the windshield. The smoke of John's cigar rolled from the open window and up to mix with the flutter of exhaust. He was waiting for Hank to repeat his question. When Hank only looked at him he began to fidget with the choke knob, then finally blurted out, "Hank, look here: you don't need me up here tomorrow for burnin' slash. And I hate to chance the rig on this road more'n I have to, the way the bedrock's washing loose."
The motor of the truck idled; a sleepy, restful sound; smoke rose from the stack to blend with the rain and oncoming night. Hank continued to watch John narrowly until he went on. "Blast it . . . the way I see it you boys'll be falling direct to the river at this state-park deal, without much use for a trucker." He licked his lips. "So the way I see it . . . Thanksgiving on its way and all . . ."
Hank waited until the man's voice trailed to a stop. "Okay, John," he said evenly. "I reckon we can get by. You go ahead an' tie one on."
John was stung by this for a moment, then nodded and reached for the gear. "I might do just that." Joe Ben climbed into the carrier and started the motor, wondering at Hank's noncommittal acceptance of John's desertion. Why hadn't he pushed John more? They needed every man they could get, and Hank could have put a lot more squeeze on than that . . . how come he didn't? On the drive back down Joe opened his mouth a number of times to ask something about it, something funny to take the gloom off, but always stopped when he realized he couldn't think of a funny thing at all.
After supper Viv wanted to phone Orland and his family to ask how they felt. From behind his newspaper Hank said, "I guess not, Viv. I guess we'll find out in good time."
"But I think we should find out now, Hank, in case . . ."
"I don't believe we better call," he said. "That Asia flu is damned contagious; we wouldn't want to pick up somethin' over the phone from Orland."
He gave a short laugh and went back to his paper. Viv wasn't ready to drop it. "Hank. Honey, we should know. There's the kids, and Janice. And Lee had that temperature last night and tonight he had to lie right down after supper, so I know he doesn't feel so good--"
"Lee still doesn't feel so good, huh? Along with Orland? And Big and Little Lou and the rest? Doggone, sounds like a epidemic."
She ignored his sarcasm. "And I think we should find out from Olivia what the symptoms are."
Joe was on the couch, helping Jan get the kids in pajamas. He watched Hank put down the paper. "You want to know what the symptoms are? Hell, I can tell you what they are: the symptoms are clear as glass. First, see, it rains. Then it gets a little chilly. Then it gets muddy and tough goin' on the hills. Then one morning you get to thinking how much nicer it'd be layin' in bed all day with your finger up your ass instead of goin' out in the goddam woods workin' yourself punchy! Those are the symptoms, if you want to know. In Orland's case I got a notion there's probably some special complications, like living next door to Floyd Evenwrite, but as far as just the usual symptoms go, you can't miss 'em."
"What about a temperature? Don't you think a three-degree fever means something?"
He laughed and picked up the paper again. "What I think don't means beans, so we'll just leave that out. I mean I could think all sorts of stuff; in the Marines I used to think maybe the guys who got put on sick call by rubbin' a thermometer on their pant leg wasn't so sick as they'd like you to believe, but I couldn't be sure of that. So let's just forget what I think and I'll tell you what I know. I know we ain't calling Orland; I know I'm going up to the bedroom to finish the paper if you think I can make it without catching something in the drafty hall; and then I know--shit, never mind." He rolled his paper into a tight club and started for the door; at the stairwell he stopped and turned and pointed it back at the table. "I know this too: I'm going to finish out that last boom, it don't matter if I come down with flu from every country in the world. And if Orland or Lou calls, you can tell them that!"
He whapped the paper against his thigh and turned to tromp on up the steps. From the couch Joe listened to the stockinged feet striking the flo
or overhead, loud as old Henry's cast and just as hard-sounding. And didn't he sound plenty hard just now, tellin' us what to say to Orland? You bet he did. . . .
But, just as Joe knew that those feet banging around upstairs were bare, for all their hard and booted sound, he knew that there was something bare about Hank's hard talking too. Something naked-sounding about the voice . . . Joe frowned for a moment, searching for a way to explain the sound to himself; a slight cough from upstairs gave him the chance: Not naked, he insisted to himself in an attempt to find peace with his worry . . . no, not naked, raw! Throat all raw. Cold, that's what made him sound like he did. Raw. Yeah. Have to see that he takes care of that bad throat, I will. . . .
Upstairs, Hank's attempt to find some kind of peace didn't meet with much luck. First off, the sports page had been left downstairs. (The kid is down there. . . .) Then there wasn't enough hot water left from dishes to take a decent shower. Then those damn geese were out there again so thick and heavy and hullabalooing that I found myself wishing to beat heaven that Joe Ben'd not only laid into that one lone honker when he had the chance earlier but into every other goddam goose that had come over since! Then, to top it all off good, those mothering phone calls started up again. They was worse than the geese. At least the geese didn't insist you get out of bed and walk all the way downstairs to say hello, like the phone-callers did. I tried to get Lee to handle some of the calk for me, seeing that he was downstairs anyhow, but he claimed he wasn't feeling up to it (he's lying on the couch, sucking that damn thermometer ); Joe was more than willing to answer a few for me but I told him it was a shame but he didn't have the knack for such chit-chat. (After about the third trip down I ask the kid if he can't see his way clear to let me have the couch so I could be near the phone. He says yes and starts upstairs.) Joe wanted to know what that knack was we had that he didn't, and Lee stopped on the steps and told him it was the ability to be nice to somebody at the same time you're cutting their throat. "You're one of the few people left without the ability, Joe," Lee told him. "Be proud of the lack. Don't force such rare innocence into extinction any quicker than necessary."