wrote
Sure enough, he had bought one of those sign kits at the hardware store, and the access road for that winter’s cut was Becky Avenue-“avenue” because she thought her dad’s suggestion, Becky Lane, sounded like an actress’s name. That had been when she thought making her mark on the forest was the way to show how much she loved it.
She hissed, impatient with her own sentimentality, and moved on to the next vehicle.
Randy Schoof appeared over the rise where the road met the clearing. He waved, and she waved back before raising the camera and capturing a side view of the skidder for posterity. Randy strolled past her as she jotted down a description of the skidder’s condition, glancing at the feller-buncher and the dump trucks, resembling nothing so much as a Sunday shopper on a car lot.
He stopped. “Uh. Yeah.” He took a few steps toward her. “Actually, I work for your dad. I mean, I did. Before he decided to pull the plug.”
Great. She was up here with a disgruntled former employee. What if he decided to goof up one of the engines to get back at her dad? “It’s not really his decision,” she said in a loud voice. “Once the Adirondack Conservancy Corporation takes control, logging’s going to be forbidden on this land.”
He looked at the slumbering giants all around them. “There’s still work if you’re willing to go for it. Travel farther up north for the cutting. Or harvest small private wood-lots. You know, fifteen acres here, fifteen acres there.”
She crossed to the feller-buncher and started taking pictures. The sooner she finished up, the sooner she- they-could get out of here. “Fifteen acres here and there won’t pay my dad’s costs.”
“Yeah, but what about just a few guys, throwing in together?”
She looked at him sharply. “What were you seeing my father about earlier?”
“I wanted to work something out to, you know, keep the business going. Like, pay him over time for the equipment.”
“It’s pretty valuable.” Becky tried to keep the skepticism from her voice. “I don’t know if he can afford to take back a note on it.” The young man’s blank face indicated he had no idea what taking back a note was. “Sell the equipment to you on credit and let you pay the loan back on time,” she explained.
“So he’s going to sell all this.” He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and rocked back and forth on his boot heels.
“Yeah.” She moved to the front of the crawler tractor and took another picture.
“Man, all I need is one break. I know I could make a go of it.”
She forced herself to keep her eyes on her notebook as she wrote down the condition and VIN of the crawler tractor.
“I mean, what if a couple machines went missing? Your dad wouldn’t be hurting. He’d get the insurance money.”
Was he suggesting what she thought he was? She lifted her head. Randy was staring past her, past the crawler tractor, into some limitless future that existed only in his mind.
She brought the camera back up and snapped off a shot of him.
“Hey,” he said.
She took another. Then another. Stepped to one side so she could center him in front of the feller- buncher.
“Quit it. What are you doing?” He took a step toward her.
“I’m taking your picture.” She looked at him over the top of the camera. “I’m not sure if you got this when I was talking about my work earlier, but I work for the ACC. If you’re thinking about sneaking back here and making off with some of this equipment-which is a pretty damn stupid idea all around, since you can’t even move half this stuff without a flatbed-I think you ought to know you won’t just be ripping off my dad, you’ll be ripping off my employer.”
She snapped off another picture.
“Cut it out!” He lunged toward her.
She danced back out of his way. “You really are that stupid, aren’t you?” she said. “Jesus! You’re actually thinking about making off with a skidder!”
“Gimme that! You can’t take my picture!” He swiped one long hand toward the camera. She held it back and over her head, out of reach. “Give it to me!” he repeated.
He charged at her. At the last moment, she dropped her notebook and purse and grabbed one of the aluminum poles holding the canopy over the tractor. She swung herself around it, flying free. Her boxed and bound rage tipped over and shook loose, burning out of her skin, rendering her weightless, invincible. She touched ground, light as a feather, her eyes fierce and her chest full of a triumphant crow. To hell with Eugene van der Hoeven. To hell with Millie. To hell with her father. She could outmaneuver this idiot forever. She bared her teeth at him.
“Bitch!” He lunged for her again. This time she leaped onto the tractor itself, one foot on the tread, the other on the seat, and then over the side.
He surprised her then. She thought he would follow her route, a filing to the magnet, but instead he circled the tractor so fast she had to scramble back across the seat to the other side. She barely avoided his reach, and she nearly fell off the tread getting back to the ground. A cold bucket of reality upended over her. She was alone in the forest with a guy built like a jackhammer. He came around the back of the crawler, his body much faster than his brain, and this time she neither crowed nor grinned, just tucked her chin down and ran, flat out, toward the road. Toward her car. Toward escape.
She pounded through the clearing, eyes fixed on the ground, leaping over a wind-scattered branch, dodging a rut gouged by a massive truck tire. She was deafened by her thudding feet, her sawing breath, the blood pistoning through her, so she was caught off guard when the blow came out of nowhere, snapping her head sideways, reeling her around, filling her skull with a terrible pain that was a sound, impossible to separate from the sound he was making, rage and pain twisted together.
She staggered, tripped, caught herself, and ran again, tears blurring her vision. She got three steps away before he tackled her, sending her head snapping against the ground and all the breath jarring out of her so she couldn’t make a sound when he slapped her, hard, and clawed at the camera still clutched in her hand.
“Gimme… the fuckin’… camera!” As he reached, he stretched, and from some well of self-preservation she saw her opportunity and took it, punching him in the throat.
He gargled horribly, like a drowning victim, and she shoved him off her and staggered to her feet. He was clutching his neck. It sounded as if he couldn’t breathe. She stood, tiptoe, suspended between flight and responsibility.
Then he sucked in a rattling, tubercular breath and lurched toward her. She ran again, for the first time knowing the wild, muscle-bunching, adrenaline-spiked velocity that means
… and there was a terrific crunch to her head, and then nothing.
