Robert had converted an old singlewide trailer into a kiln and most of his customers ordered mixed loads of both air- and kiln-dried. Kiln-dried wood burns hotter than air-dried. Mixing a kiln-dried log in with every fire produces more heat, allows the air-dried wood to burn more efficiently. People with woodstoves got as much heat out of two air-dried cords mixed with half a cord of kiln-dried as people who burned four straight cords. When a single woodstove is the primary heat source for a whole house, each log has to do its job. Robert charged more for the kiln-dried and nobody kicked about the price.
I took my Texaco ball cap off. “If you don’t want it mixed, we’ll have to take two trucks.” Lord’s farm was thirty-five miles north and slightly west, just on the Vermont side of the Connecticut River, near Newbury. The river came straight down through the Northeast Kingdom, and just past Wells River, it made an oxbow, flowing briefly north in a U-shaped collar before returning to its southern course. Lord’s farm encompassed all of the oxbow, stretching from Route 5 all the way east to the river, which was the Vermont-New Hampshire border. It was the most beautiful spot on earth, the most amazing fields and woods and sky that Bill Allen had ever seen. Robert and I had driven past once that summer, on the way to Wells River to pick up a chain saw. Looking out of the truck as we drove up Route 5 and seeing Lord’s white farm buildings and fields, I thought maybe I could make it through Bill Allen and still have a life, somewhere. On the way back, the view of the green fields sweeping out into the bend of the river made everything stop. I didn’t hear the engine of the truck, nor the gears. We floated along the road as my mind took picture after picture, of the farm and the fields and the blue sky with the sun setting. That bend in the river. I came alive for a minute, and as the farm slowly passed by I died again, back into the zombie lie of Bill Allen.
Robert was talking to me, shaking his head. “He’s got some extra work. Stobe can drive the small rig.”
Stobik lived south of the woodlot, in White River Junction, and did odd jobs for Robert. Stobik’s wife was as big as the house they lived in. He didn’t have a phone — if Robert needed him for something, I’d drive down first thing in the morning and pick him up. Just pulled my beat-up Bronco into his dooryard and sat there till he came out. Sometimes, a thin, white hand would appear in the dirty window, waving me away. Too drunk to work. He lived in a culvert on the woodlot for about a month when things got tough with his wife. He was skinny as a rail, hadn’t showered in about a week, month, year. His teeth were broken brown stumps and his fingers were stained from tobacco. But he could cut and stack firewood faster than two men, and at half the price.
“I’ll pick him up in the morning,” I said.
“That’s OK. I’ll get him tonight and let him sleep on the porch,” Robert said. “I want to make sure he can work tomorrow.” He walked back inside the shed. I fixed Frank Lord’s load of wood for the next day and went to the loft of a barn I called home.
Next morning, I was at the woodlot at five-thirty. It was pitch black. Robert was already there, sitting in his pickup truck, drinking coffee and eating a hard-boiled egg. He had the running lights on. I drove slowly over to the open driver’s side window.
“Thought you overslept,” he said.
I climbed out of the Bronco and got into the big white rig. Stobik got behind the wheel of the small one. Robert was driving the big rig.
The floor of the white rig was taken up with logging chains. The last job Robert had used it for was a semicommercial haul, and he’d left the chains in. He had a whole barn full of them up by his house. He’d load them in the truck and then get weighed, toss them out at the job and then leave them there. The customer paid the difference. How many people paid for those chains, only God knows. The fuse box was open on the passenger’s side, so that any metal that jumped up during the ride could ’cause a spark or worse. It made for a tense ride.
We started the drive up to North Haverhill on the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut River. It was beautiful. The sun began to shine. The truck could only make thirty-five fully loaded. Stobik was always right behind us, with the flashers on. Robert wrestled the gears up a hill. Then he lit a cigarette and spoke.
“When I was fifteen, I ran away and ended up on Frank Lord’s farm.” He looked over at me.
“I didn’t know that,” I answered.
“Frank Lord worked me so hard I thought I was going to drop. But it straightened me out. Best thing that ever happened to me.”
“What was wrong with you?” I asked.
“Bad temper,” Robert answered. “Bad temper and drinking.” We passed a broken-down barn.
“At fifteen?”
Robert nodded. “Back then, fifteen was like thirty-five. You had a job, a car — they made you live life back then, and if you didn’t like it, get the fuck out.” He took a drag off his cigarette. He was silent, smoking, for the rest of the ride.
Frank Lord was standing in his driveway as we pulled up. He looked as though we’d just been there yesterday He had an oxygen mask on and a green tank marked OXYGEN in white letters standing next to him. The fields stretched out behind him all the way to the river. The big white farmhouse behind him needed a coat of paint. There were a couple of barns and buildings. They needed paint too. Parked alongside the main house was a brand-new pickup truck. On top of the main house was a black wrought iron weather vane, the silhouette of a big black stallion. The weather vane pointed north.
“What are you going to do, make something out of yourself or what?” His voice was muffled behind the clear plastic mask. His breath made it fill with mist. He pointed over toward the nearest barn. “Put it over there,” he said through the mask. “Don’t mix it together.” He and Robert walked slowly toward the main house and sat on the porch in kitchen chairs. Stobik and I unloaded and stacked the wood. Stobik worked fast. His stacks were the straightest I’ve ever seen. His face seemed frozen in a perpetual grin as we worked in silence. The stacks came out perfectly. We went back over to Robert and Frank on the porch. It was just around noon.
“We’ve got some other work to do,” Frank said. He held out a piece of paper.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Yesterday, in the morning, Judge Harris stopped over here. Unofficially. I’ve known his family for probably, oh, fifty years.” The breeze tossed the tops of the corn. “He told me that the state police got a tip I was growing marijuana. They were trying to get a warrant to search my house and my fields.” He held out the paper. “Harris dropped this off.” I read the paper. It was a one-day special permit for a controlled burn.
“What do you want us to do?” I asked.
“Burn it, all of it. Right back to the river. I don’t want a single thing left alive.” He stared at the porch and then looked straight at Stobik and me. “Just in case there’s a little Mexican hay that got mixed in with my corn somehow.”
Robert came down off the porch to supervise. He and I rigged up a sprayer with some gas and soaked a good portion of the front field. We left a wide strip in the middle completely dry. Then we drove the tractor through a thin line of trees, and there was a huge cornfield that stretched all the way to the river. In the middle of the field, probably six hundred yards away, was a small white shack. Robert spoke up.
“That’s where my first wife and I lived.” He looked at it.
I looked over at him. “I never think about you being married.”
He nodded. “Well I was, for a while.” He pointed his chin at the shack. “People that live in places like that don’t very often stay married.” He stared at the white shack. “I had a bad temper then.”
I nodded. “Should we burn it?”