The first time Jake saw a woman pee, he was in the middle of a shorn wasteland where a forest of jack pines had once stood. It was the end of the workday. The sun was still high but had lost its warmth. A sharp wind had begun to blow dirty clouds across the sky. The three tree planters were standing on the margin of a two-tire dirt track, waiting for the foreman to come in his pickup to take them back to camp. Jen and Skye leaned on their shovels, their empty planting bags slouched at their hips, passing a cigarette back and forth with dirt-caked fingers.
“So, Jake, how many you get in the ground today?” Skye asked. Her eyes seemed extra bright, surrounded by dirt. She had ripped the sleeves off her shirt and stretched one around her ears to keep out the blackflies.
Jen took the cigarette from between Skye’s lips with a forefinger and thumb, puffed, and flicked it into the middle of the road, scattering sparks.
“Uncle Bernie would fine your ass if he saw you do that,” said Skye.
“He’d have to kiss it first,” Jen replied.
Uncle Bernie was their nickname for the checker from Forestry who stalked the newly planted land each day in orange steel-toed boots and a canary-yellow hard hat. He fined you if your trees were too close together, too far apart, tilted, J-rooted, too deep, too shallow, too loose, improperly screefed, planted in red rot, planted in duff, black spruce in sandy soil, or jack pine in swamp. On the first day of the season, he had stood on a table in the mess tent and shown them how to stub their cigarettes until they could pinch the burned end between finger and thumb. Every fluff of dried moss on the cutblock was tinder. “You fuck up, you’re fired!” he’d shouted.
“So,” said Skye, still looking at Jake, “how many did you get in?”
Jake squinted up toward the sun, as if he were trying to calculate, though he’d counted and recounted his 850 miserable trees, and he knew that, at nine cents a tree, he’d earned $76.50. Subtracting $25 for camp costs left him with $51.50. It was still better than his first few days, after which he’d owed the camp money.
“A thousand,” he said, adding the trees still in his bags.
“Fuckin’ A,” said Skye. “My first week, I don’t think I broke 500.”
“You planted 1,500 on your second day,” said Jen. “I was there.”
“What can I say? My memory’s shit.” Skye grinned, turned her back to Jake, and squatted down in the middle of the road, dropping her muddy pants in a motion so swift Jake couldn’t help glimpsing the curve of her thigh before he managed to look away.
“You could at least warn him,” said Jen. She lit another cigarette.
“Jake, I’m pissing,” said Skye. “Look away if you must. If you can.”
“You’re fucking embarrassing him, man,” said Jen.
“If a man can piss wherever he’s standing, so can I.”
Jake could hear the hiss of her stream hitting the sand. He felt a shiver of excitement. He’d never met a lesbian before—that he knew of, anyway. He’d grown up in a small Prairie town where everyone spent Sunday morning either in church or drinking beer at the gravel pit, chucking their empties at the dragline. Jake had always been content among the churchgoers, solid people who, if not always lights for the whole world, could certainly be counted on to show up at your door in times of trouble, bearing casseroles and sympathy. At Bible college, Jake’s roommate, Elmer, had told him about tree planting. You could make ten grand in two months, if you were good. Elmer recruited most of his crew from Bible college. He’d even formed an accountability group to keep them from being tempted, out there in the wilderness, by marijuana, alcohol, and sex, all of which were rampant. Every evening, they would gather in front of Elmer’s tent, and he’d get out his battered guitar and lead them in singing praise and worship songs. Everyone else in camp gave them a wide berth.
By the time Jake had decided to sign up, Elmer’s crew was full, so Jake had ended up with another company, in northern Ontario, where he knew no one. Packing his Liquidation World tent and army-surplus sleeping bag, he’d decided that he’d steer clear of drugs and booze, but if an opportunity to do something with a girl presented itself, he would go for it. He was almost twenty-three. Jesus had lived another decade without sex. Jake wasn’t sure he could make it that long.
His Christian friends assumed he was a virgin, and his (few) non-Christian friends assumed he wasn’t. Jake didn’t bother trying to set the latter group straight, but recently he’d started to think that, as long as he was implicitly lying to someone, he might as well switch things around. He wanted, just once, for a girl to take his hands and guide them to her breasts. Before he died or Christ returned. Sometimes he wanted it so badly he could feel a physical pain, like the blade of a knife, pressing in a vertical line along his breastbone. He couldn’t exactly pray for it to happen, but he knew God would forgive him if it did.
Every evening, as the cold spring wind snapped at the canvas of the mess tent and the tree planters bent their heads over plates piled with food, Brook, the foreman, stood in the doorway and shouted their names, one by one, and each planter shouted back their tally for the day. Jake always sat at the table closest to the tent door—even though that meant he was farthest from the warmth of the wood stove—so that only those at his table would hear his number.
“Aaron?” yelled Brook.
“3,500.”
“Fuckin’ awesome!” Brook performed the ritual with his boots apart, clipboard in hand, bleached hair tufted into a peak. He had been foremanning the crew for ten years now, the other nine months of each spent surfing in Bali. He had a wreath of hibiscus flowers tattooed around his shoulders and could drive a quad loaded with tree boxes through a shithole that would swallow anyone else.
“Kelly?”
“1,900.”
“Rough day?”
“Yeah. Broke my shovel. Had to wait two hours for a new one.”
“God damn. Jen?”
“3,750.”
“There’s my highballer. Skye?”
“4,100.”
“Jen, what happened? Couldn’t keep up with the legend?”
“Fuck you,” said Jen.
When Jake’s turn came, he said his number so quietly that Brook had to walk over to hear it again. The only person who’d planted fewer trees than he had was Naomi, but each tree Naomi planted was impeccable: flawlessly spaced, perfectly vertical in moist mineral soil, deep enough that the plug was entirely covered but not so deep that a single lateral was buried. Uncle Bernie checked everyone’s planted land by drawing a circle with his plot cord at random and inspecting each tree within it. Rumour had it that he’d stopped throwing plots on Naomi’s land after twelve perfect scores. This was her second year planting, and so far, she’d never planted enough trees in a day to break minimum wage. Still, she carried herself with poise and confidence and was kind to everyone. She also stood out from the rest of the camp for her insistence on showering daily, even when the heater was down and the water was lake cold.
The next day, Jake was stuck on a bald dome of granite. He tapped his shovel into every tuft of grass and island of lichen, in search of soil deep enough to sink a plug into. By noon, his wrist ached and his ears rang with the hateful tink of steel on stone. His bags were still half full and had begun to chafe against his thighs. He walked back to his cache for lunch and found Naomi there, filling her planting bags.
“Brook put me on your piece,” she said. “Sorry. I know you like to plant alone.”
“Fine with me,” said Jake. “The sooner we finish this rock, the sooner we can move to something better.” He unbuckled his bags. “I’m taking lunch.”
“I’ll start along the far edge, and we can both work toward the middle.”
“We can plant side by side if you want,” said Jake.
“That’s okay—I don’t want to slow you down.”
“It might speed us up.” He knew that the highballers planted in pairs, shoulder to shoulder, taking turns following trees and bagging each other out.
She smiled. “To be totally honest, it’s best for me to work alone. I’ve got a weird style. Thanks, though.”
Jake watched her fill her bags with plastic-wrapped bundles of black spruce. She was the only one who obeyed the rule about unwrapping one bundle at a time. Everyone else unbundled everything in their feeder bag. It was faster that way, though the trees at the bottom were always mangled. Brook had shown Jake how to strip the needles off a stem with a thumbnail and throw it away. “Just don’t let Uncle Bernie catch you doing that.” Jake felt a twinge of conscience every time he stripped a tree, but unwrapping each bundle individually took too long.
He ate a peanut butter sandwich and watched Naomi move away, over the granite ridge, stooping to look for spots of soil. He flexed his fingers. The numbness in his wrist had spread to his forearm. If he started planting right now, maybe he could catch up to her at the back of the piece. Maybe they would take a break there, at the edge of the clear-cut swath, where the forest sprang back up. The sheer cutaway seemed so exposed, like a house sawed in half, its occupant caught eating cake straight from the fridge. Maybe he and Naomi would drop their bags there and walk in among the trees to sit on a lichen-covered boulder and talk. Maybe he would put his arm around her and she would move into his embrace and raise her mouth to his. Maybe—
“Hey! Time to get off your ass!”
Jake opened his eyes and saw Brook striding over the tree-stumped land, grinning, teeth white against his tan. Brook hated to see anyone sitting still. “Plant those motherfucking trees!” he liked to sing out whenever he caught someone idling.
“How are you for boxes?” Brook lifted the corner of the Silvicool tarp.
“I’ve got lots.”
“I see that. I sent Naomi to help you finish off this shit. You were taking too long. Did you see her?”
Jake pointed at the ridge.
“I’ve got some creamy land for you when you’re done here.” Brook folded his arms over his muscled chest and examined them in the sunlight. Then he turned and loped over the rise in the direction Naomi had gone.
Jake felt a cramp in his chest. He finished his sandwich, stuffed his bags, and bent to his task, following Naomi’s ragged line of trees back up the ridge. At the top, he paused. He could see Naomi stooping and rising near the treeline. Brook was helping her. Jake watched him reach into her bag for a handful of trees. He seemed to float over the ground. Of course, Jake thought. Of course Brook would help her. They must be sleeping together. He stabbed at a patch of moss but there was no soil underneath and the sharp pang of blade on rock jolted up his arm. “Dammit!” The word tasted satisfyingly sweet. He lashed out with his shovel at a stump. The blade recoiled from the spongy wood and hit him in the shoulder. “Damn you to hell!” He threw his shovel as hard as he could, watched it arc and then fall, blade first, and spark off a stone. There was no one around to hear him. No one but God.
Above him hummed the concave sky. A teardrop-shaped bird skittered across a puddle, stopped in front of him, and shook out its feathers. It moved with a twitching sideways step, turning its head to watch him with one eye. A pine, spared by loggers but shorn of branches, grieved in the wind.
The next day, Brook drove Jake and Naomi around on the quad and let them fill in a series of sandy burns. The planting was fast and they were soon covered in soot.
It was midafternoon when the checker’s tan pickup pulled up at the cache. Uncle Bernie got out, put on his hard hat, and gestured for Brook to come over.
“Someone’s in trouble,” said Naomi.
Jake stopped working and watched the two men confer. He could see Brook’s face sag. The checker got back into his pickup and turned it around in the road. Brook waited until he was out of sight and then came over to Jake and Naomi. “Bad news. Uncle Bernie threw a plot on the piece you finished yesterday. He found two loose trees and a dropped one. Plus the spacing was tight.”
“Shit,” said Jake.
Naomi didn’t say anything. Her mouth was a line.
“He’s pretty pissed,” said Brook. “Apparently yours wasn’t the only bad plot. Sparky’s going to have a fucking hernia.”
“I’ve never had a bad plot in my life,” said Naomi.
“It was probably on my side,” said Jake. He felt a punch of guilt in his gut. He knew what this meant: a day of replanting without pay. Worse than the penalty was the knowledge that he had planted bad trees. He wanted to throw up.
The mood in the mess tent that night was heavy. The company’s owner, known affectionately as Sparky, yelled at Brook in front of the crew. Sparky was a short balding man of pure muscle who bounced when he walked and grinned at people when he was about to fire them. The company’s sterling reputation had been damaged, he shouted. Everyone who had gotten a bad plot would replant the next day, and Brook would plot them, and anyone with two or more bad trees would pack up their shit and go home.
“It’ll blow over. This happens at least once a season,” said Jen after Sparky had gone. She was sitting at the same table as Jake, who was finding it hard to swallow his shepherd’s pie.
“Easy for you to say,” said a freckle-faced planter with a sheaf of sawdust-coloured dreadlocks atop his head. His name was Tyler and he lived in a van with his rookie girlfriend and their Shih Tzu. The dog yapped all day, locked inside the van.
“What do you mean?” asked Skye.
“Everyone knows Sparky would never fire a highballer,” Tyler answered.
“Maybe that’s because we plant good quality,” said Jen.
“Just sayin’. If heads roll tomorrow, they won’t be yours.”
“Just plant good trees and you’ll have nothing to worry about.”
“I’ve never had a bad plot before today,” said Tyler. “But someone’s gonna have to get the axe so Sparky can cover his ass.”
In the morning, a mean rain was coming down. Jake and Naomi replanted all day. Brook apologized to Naomi when he dropped them off. “Just put your head down and keep quiet until Sparky cools off.”
Jake worked on his side, Naomi on hers. The cold rain seeped into Jake’s hands. By late afternoon he had checked every tree on the piece, fixing the loose ones, and his fingers were so rubbery with cold he couldn’t pinch his forefinger and thumb together hard enough to jam a plug into a hole. He hadn’t earned a dime, but he felt better. Absolved. He would plant slowly and perfectly, like Naomi. It was important to live an exemplary life in a place like this. As a Christian, you couldn’t convince people with words; your actions had to speak for themselves.
Back at camp, they heard the news. Tyler’s rookie girlfriend had gotten a second bad plot and been fired. Tyler had gotten into a shouting match with Sparky and been fired as well. There was a dry rectangle of sand where their van had been parked. Jake silently thanked God it hadn’t been him.
The next day, the sky cleared and the sun came out. Brook dropped Jake off alone. “Flag a line straight to the treeline and work your way to the right,” he said. “I’ve got Skye working toward you from the other side. When you meet up, you can figure out how you want to divide the piece.” He seemed wilted. No cheerful, profanity-laced exhortation this time.
“Skye’s not planting with Jen?”
“I had to separate them,” Brook said. “They got two bad plots.”
The piece was deep. Jake used up a third of his trees just getting to the treeline. At the back it opened up, and he could see that, if he and Skye didn’t empty a few bags there, they’d fill in their access. There was nothing more inefficient than having to load up with trees and walk back over planted land.
When Jake returned to the cache, he found Skye squatting in the middle of the road, smoking. She was wearing a lime-green bandana, her hair tied up in a fist on top of her head. “How many bags you done?”
“One. You?”
“Three. You been bagging out in the back?”
Jake nodded.
“It’s fucking huge back there.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You want to plant it together?”
Jake looked at her. She was wearing black combat boots. Her planting bags dangled, empty, from their shoulder straps. Her wide sun-browned face, eyes slitted against the sunlight, made Jake think of some kind of rough stone Aztec goddess. “I won’t be able to keep up.”
“After I teach you a few tricks, you will.” She took a grubby pack of cigarettes from a pocket in her cargo pants, put an unlit one between her lips, and began filling her bags.
Jake soon found that Skye followed trees effortlessly. She could tell at a glance what was planted and what wasn’t, whereas Jake often had to study the land for a moment before he could pick out the tiny green fronds. As they worked their way to the treeline, she showed him how to plant in triangles instead of lines, how to punch or squeeze a hole closed instead of kicking it, how to glance ahead for his next spot instead of looking at the tree he was planting. Jake scrambled to keep up. He was surprised at how fast he could move when he didn’t have to stop and squint for trees. It was all about economy of motion. He wanted to learn to move like she moved.
“Throw me a bundle,” called Skye when her bags were empty.
“You don’t need to bag me out,” said Jake. “I’ve still got three bundles to go.”
“I said throw me a fucking bundle.”
Jake threw her a bundle.
They walked back to the cache together. Out of the corner of his eye, Jake watched her stocky body and tried to figure out how she could move so fast.
At the cache, Jake ripped open a box and began stuffing his bags. Skye watched him and smoked. “Goddamn gorgeous day,” she said. “You hear that red-tailed hawk?”
Jake stopped and listened. He heard something that sounded like a sharp piece of metal scratching glass.
“She’s pissed. Probably has a nest in that tree. You smoke?”
“Uh, sure. I’ll have one.” The cigarette tasted like mint and the smoke burned his throat. When he flicked his butt onto the road—expertly, he thought—Skye walked over, picked it up, and put it in her pocket. “One of these could kill a bird.”
“Oh. I didn’t know.”
“They’re all dying, you know.”
“The birds?”
“Because of this.” She waved at the wasteland of shattered branches and tire-torn soil around them. “Because of us.”
They planted together for the rest of the day. Skye bagged Jake out every time. She showed him how to follow the contours of the land and fill in the little pockets that were hard to reach. By the end of the day, Jake had planted 2,000 trees and his throat was raw from menthols.
“You’ll be a highballer soon if you keep this up,” said Skye. They sat on the roadside, waiting for the truck to pick them up.
Skye lit up another cigarette and handed him one. She leaned over and lit his with the tip of hers, letting a curl of smoke escape her lips. “Want to try that again without the cigarettes?”
“Sorry?”
Skye looked at him steadily until he realized what she meant.
“Uh. Okay.” His voice broke.
She leaned over, and her lips were gentle and tasted like smoke. Jake’s mind was on fire. He tried to think of something to say.
“That was nice,” said Skye.
Jake cleared his throat. “How long are you and Jen planting apart?”
Skye shrugged. “Ask Brook.”
“Are you and Jen, like, you know, together?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Oh.”
She grinned, eyes narrow. “You’re wondering if I’m queer.”
Jake shrugged.
“I’ve slept with guys. I’ve slept with girls.”
“Oh. Yeah. Of course.” Jake hadn’t thought of that possibility.
“You’re religious, aren’t you?” said Skye.
Jake hesitated. There was no pretending. “Yeah.”
She nodded. “Figured. You don’t talk about it much.”
“It’s better to just live it than talk about it.”
Skye studied him for a minute. It felt weird to be looked at like that. But not bad. His body felt light. “I can respect that,” she said.
“How long do you think it’ll take you to finish this piece?” Brook said cheerfully when he dropped Jake and Skye off at the cache the next morning.
Skye squinted at the sky. “Six thousand–ish more trees? End of the day, if Jake plants like he did yesterday.”
“Awesome,” said Brook. “Keep it up and I’ll get you and Jen together again.”
Jake found it easier on the second day. Skye still bagged him out, but by fewer bundles. By midafternoon, the piece was almost done.
“Another bag-up should do it,” said Skye. “Want to go for a swim?”
“A swim?”
“Yeah. There’s a lake back there, through the trees.”
They planted to the back and hiked into the trees, their half-full bags banging against their thighs. Jake could feel the forest breathing around him, the wind flailing the spruce branches high overhead, the trunks groaning. Between the trees, he caught a glimpse of sunlight glittering on water.
The beach was loose gravel. Skye dropped her bags and shrugged off her sweater. Jake tried not to look. He stripped down to his boxer shorts, bracing for the icy water. He heard a splash and looked up to see Skye surface. “Fuck, it’s cold!” she yelled. The water caught him like a fist and squeezed the air out of his lungs. He came up gasping and staggered back to the shore. He couldn’t feel the stones under his feet. Skye was sitting in the sun, on a slab of granite. “Come sit here. It’s warm.” She was naked.
Jake walked over to the rock, still unable to look directly at her.
“Sit.” She slapped the granite beside her.
Jake sat on the rock next to her, hugging his knees, staring out at the lake. The heat coming from her was stronger than the sun. Neither of them spoke until Skye leaned toward him and pressed her mouth against his. She moved his hands so he wouldn’t be afraid to touch her. In the shimmer of the sun coming off the lake, Jake felt his mind expand to encompass the whole of the living, breathing forest around them, glorious and ruined. He kept waiting for the wash of guilt, but he felt only wonder. That two bodies together could morph into something utterly new and blazing and unlike anything either of them had been alone.
Afterward, they lay on the rock without speaking until they started to get cold. “We should finish the piece,” said Skye. Jake watched her get up and pull her sweater down over her breasts. Dressed, she picked up her shovel, approached a wide rotten tree stump on the lake’s edge, and began to hack at its jagged top.
“What are you doing?” said Jake.
Skye’s shovel broke through the spongy wood and opened a hole into the hollow beneath it. She began taking bundles of trees out of her bags and dropping them into the hole. “What the hell does it look like I’m doing?”
“You’re stashing,” said Jake.
“Give me your fucking bag.” Skye walked over to Jake’s planting bags, picked them up, and emptied their contents into the hole in the stump. “Let’s go.”
The two of them walked back through the trees in silence. Jake could feel the heavy, mossy weight of their reproach. Skye moved faster than he did, and by the time he got to the cache, she had already bagged up and was back at work. Jake filled his bags and tried to follow her trees, but his mind was gyrating and he had to stop for minutes at a time before he could locate the trees he was supposed to be following. When Brook came by to pick them up, there was still a section of unplanted land along the road.
After supper, he lay in his tent, trying to think, trying to pray. Something invisible and heavy pressed down on his chest. He felt like vomiting. Stashing trees was an unforgivable offense; he’d be fired if he were caught. He sat up and held his hard hat under his chin, but the spasms wouldn’t come. After a while, he got up and felt around in the darkness for his cellphone. He turned it on, unzipped his tent, and walked down the gravel road to the hill, where there was reception. The moon was high and white and cold. He dialed Elmer’s number and listened to the tinny ring.
“Hey there,” said Elmer. “You staying clean?” He laughed.
“Sure.”
“Good man. A lot of temptation out there. Next year, I’ll get you on my crew.”
Jake told him about the trees in the stump. “What should I do?”
“Aw, man,” said Elmer.
“I feel like shit. I needed to tell someone.”
“If you want my advice, don’t tell anyone. If it’s a rookie’s word against a highballer’s, I can tell you right now who’s going to get the shaft.”
“Should I go back and dig them up?”
“I wouldn’t risk it.”
He didn’t tell Elmer about the sex.
The next morning, Brook dropped Jake and Skye off at the cache with a box of trees each. “I’ll be back in an hour,” he said.
Jake waited until Skye was out of sight before he shouldered his empty bags and headed for the treeline. The lake, when he reached it, was as flat as granite, glittering with grains of sunlight. Jake found the rock where he and Skye had lain. When he touched it, the roughness of its surface startled him. He remembered feeling Skye’s body pressing his into it. He still felt no guilt, only incandescence. It was as though a membrane between him and the world had been torn away.
From the rock, it was easy to find the rotten stump. Jake put his arm inside and pulled out trees, piling the shiny, plastic-wrapped bundles around him. He’d intended to replant only his own, but now it didn’t seem right to put Skye’s back in the hole. Also, he didn’t know exactly how many of the bundles were his. He’d have to plant them all.
Jake got back to the cache just as Skye came striding up, flinging handfuls of dirt from her bag like a sower from a parable. She squatted in front of a box and ripped it open. “What were you doing back there?”
Jake looked down at his bags. “I dug up the trees from yesterday.”
“What the almighty fuck?” Skye sat back on the heels of her combat boots. Her eyes were ferocious. “Christ. You’ve never stashed a tree in your life?”
He shook his head.
She looked at him. Then she laughed. The sound rang out over the scarred landscape. “Jesus, of course you haven’t.” She wiped her eyes. “Let me fill you in. I’m sure you think you’re doing something noble out here, replanting these ravaged forests. You know what? It’s a fucking industry. Pure capitalism. These trees will never replace what was destroyed. Ten years down the line, they’ll send out a crew with brush saws to thin them out and douse the understorey with chemicals so we get a nice straight crop to be harvested and turned into toilet paper.”
Jake nodded silently.
“Everyone out here is just making a buck.”
He nodded.
She smiled suddenly, and he remembered the feel of her mouth against his and felt a sharp pain behind his collarbone. “Go ahead and keep your Christian conscience clean if you must. Just leave my name out of it, okay?”
When Brook arrived, he moved Jake to a beautiful flat sandy piece of land. It took him until noon to finish off the trees he’d salvaged. When his bags were empty, he sat down at his cache to eat. The day was half gone and his tally was zero. He closed his eyes and felt the red heat of the sun on his eyelids. He felt clean and good.
He ripped open a box and began stuffing his bags with bundles, tearing away the plastic wrappers. When he started to work again, he found himself following the movements he had learned from Skye. The trees poured into the ground. Jake emptied his bags and filled them again. The land was gorgeous and open. He could still reach 1,000 by the end of the day. He could have topped two if he hadn’t spent his morning planting all those trees from yesterday. He was working near the back of the piece when he came across a patch of soft sand hidden behind a stand of poplars. A wild thought came to him. Without letting himself question it, he stopped and began to dig. The sand yielded under his shovel. Into the hole he dropped fistfuls of trees until his feeder bag was empty. No way of knowing how many—fewer for sure than he’d replanted for Skye but enough to save him hours of work. He stood up and looked down at the trees, lying prone in their mass grave. He couldn’t do it. It was impossible to know where his sins ended and Skye’s began. As he retrieved the trees and laid them gently back into his planting bags, he found himself craving one of Skye’s cigarettes.
Jake was leaving the mess tent after dinner when Brook pulled him aside. “Nice work today.” There was something odd in Brook’s tone. He wouldn’t meet Jake’s glance. “Sparky wants to talk to you in his office.”
“What about?”
“He didn’t say.”
Jake felt the bottom drop out of his gut.
Sparky was standing at his desk, in the trailer that served as his office, looking at a satellite map when Jake came in. “Jake! How the heck are ya!”
Jake bit his lip. This false enthusiasm— he hated it. “Brook said you wanted to see me.”
Sparky’s eyes went flat, but his smile stayed. “Yes. That’s correct.”
“About what?”
“This morning, you were seen going into the forest at the back of your piece. Alone. Brook tells me he has reason to believe you left some trees behind.”
Jake’s mouth was sticky. He swallowed and glanced briefly into Sparky’s small opaque eyes, his mind reeling through all the possible answers he could give. He heard himself say: “That’s not exactly what happened.”
“You want to tell me what did?”
“I was trying to fix a mistake.”
“A mistake?”
“Yesterday, um, I stashed some trees by accident.”
“By accident? I didn’t know you could stash trees by accident.” His blue eyes blazed. “Ya learn something new every day out here.”
Jake looked down at his boots. “I didn’t do it myself.”
“That so?” Sparky moved his stubbled jaw from side to side. “It sounds like we need all the involved parties in this office.”
After Brook and Skye had been summoned, Jake sat outside and listened to the thin walls of the trailer vibrate as Sparky yelled at each of them in turn. Then the two of them came out and Brook nodded at Jake. “Your turn,” he said. “Good luck.” Skye didn’t look at him. Jake was glad for that. He went in.
“You can pack up your tent,” said Sparky.
“I’m really sorry.”
“I’m aware of that. You’ll get paid eight cents a tree retroactive to the beginning of the season, as per your contract.”
Jake nodded. He felt the tears behind his eyelids. He turned and walked out of the trailer before any could squeeze out.
He was putting his rolled-up tent into the trunk of his Honda when Skye found him. She put one boot up on the rear wheel of the car. “I thought I told you to leave me the hell out of it.”
Jake looked at her. “I tried.” He swallowed. “You didn’t get fired, did you?”
She shook her head. “I have to plant alone for a week. Brook will check my trees.” She took out two menthols and offered Jake one. It felt like an olive branch. He took it and they smoked together in the twilight.
“You shouldn’t have gone back for the trees.” She blew a gentle cloud of smoke.
“I had to.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I know.” The edge had gone out of her voice. “You still think there’s such a thing as purity.” She crushed her cigarette against his tire and helped him finish loading up his car. When he got into the driver’s seat and rolled down the window, she said: “You’re not a bad kid.”
His throat hurt. He glanced at her quickly, one last time, then put the car in gear and drove out of the camp without looking back. There was a woolly grey layer of cloud building along the horizon. The last burn of the sun flashed in his rear-view mirror as he sped around the tight curves of the gravel logging road. By the time he reached the Trans-Canada, a thin rain had begun to fall. Jake stopped at a Husky station to fill up. As he was paying, he saw the cigarettes behind the counter and asked for a pack of menthols. Then he drove west, into the rain, watching the water stream up over his windshield. He listened to the drone of tires on wet pavement and the hiss of water coming off his wipers and felt his chest open up again to swallow the universe, and he was happy. He thought that, if Christ came back right now, right this minute, he’d be ready.
