I stand swaying in the boxcar as the freight pulls into the railyard.

It’s ten years since I left.

Two hitches in jail, one of them on an honest-to-God chain gang.

One near-marriage, which was almost worse than jail.

Nobody is going to recognize me.

I’m thirty pounds down in weight, my once-black hair shot with gray and matted with my beard into a greasy tangle that covers most of my shirt.

I feel the weight of a.38 revolver in one pocket of my ragged jeans, a mostly-drunk pint of whiskey in the other.

They won’t be expecting me, anyway.

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Both sides of the highway showed dense forest, the hillside vistas crowded with trees.

I couldn’t see what he was talking about, and said so.

He shook his head and chuckled.

“That forest you’re looking at is about this thick,” he said, taking one hand off the wheel and holding up thumb and forefinger. “Bastards clearcut every hillside except the ones you can see from the road. You look down on this from an airplane and it’s like a goddamn bomb hit it. Nothing but stumps from here to McMinnville.”

“Why do they do that?”

“People need their paper towels.”

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“You know,” she says, “most missing persons are never found. Especially children.”

He’s not listening, reading his paper like he does.

“I’m just saying that people give up.”

He grunts and turns the page.

“They really leave it up to law enforcement, but the cops don’t have the patience. That’s why so many true crime podcasts.”

He folds his paper and sets it on the table, takes off his glasses. “Your point?”

“Well, you know how when we went to Mount Angel on the backroads that time? We saw that white van in the bushes?”

“Again with a white van?”

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T’akshlish cowers in the crotch of the Mother Tree as the winds roar through the valley.

She is terrified.

The branches of the tallest trees break and fly through the air, the lightning and thunder and wind making an unbearable noise that batters her body until she seems to disappear into it.

The Mother Tree groans and shakes and T’akshlish hugs it with all her might, her own trembling and the tree’s together.

And then it is over.

She  pushes away branches covering her refuge and emerges in a new world of shattered stumps and slanting beams of sunlight.

 

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You see him in town and you think he was just another goddamned bum.

Torn camo pants, heel-down boots, a grimy backpack, hair stuffed into a watch-cap.

But step out of the city and you’d learn different.

Once he hits forest he just disappears, moving across the country with all the noise of an owl gliding between tree trunks.

We were in his camp, so well-hidden you might walk through it without knowing.

I was trying unsuccessfully to get him to take a cellphone.

“It’s just for emergencies,” I said.

“What emergencies?”

“If something happens.”

He smiled. “Everything always happens.”

 

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I met Colette at a coffee bar on the Main, a Greek place where it’s easy to pick up girls.

She spoke very little English but tried hard anyway.

Thick Canuck accent like a cartoon.

I could tell she was from the sticks because her teeth were crooked.

Still, she was a looker.

Raven hair and pale skin.

We got on good at first, but then my alarms started going off.

She was needy.

I told her I had to go but that we should meet at Gibeau’s later.

“I’ll be waiting for you around back,” I said.

She smiled.

 

Bitch deserved to get her car jacked .

That’s all I’m sayin’.

Left her car running while she dashed into the dry-cleaners.

I mean, who does that?

Sweet ride, too.

BMW.

I never snag the new ones since the computers render most ways of jacking obsolete.

Damn things won’t move unless the key is inside, you know?

I heard that you can unlock them with computers now, but if I was rich enough to own a computer I have to be stealin’ no cars.

I was going around ninety when the dog ran out.

Woulda got away but for that damned airbag.

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Good lord. You can hardly hear the guide over the engine.

You can’t hear it if you’re complaining.

I wanted to do the double-decker tour like we saw on TV.

We can see the whole of New York with this one.

Can’t wait to talk to the boys at the office. What did you do in New York? Oh, sat on a fucking boat for six hours.

Hush. Look there! See it? The Statue of Liberty.

Huh.

Remember in The Godfather when Vito sees it for the first time?

Vito had a better view. It’s a mile away at least.

 

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I seen kids with no more than two weeks of truck school out there hauling loads.

Margins are so tight companies don’t give a shit about safety.

Think about that next time you’re passing a truck on the freeway.

I come up in the union days. Teamsters.

We had pride then.

Sure, there was bad apples, pillheads and drunks and even a serial killer or two.

More thieves than anything in them days.

Mobsters.

Bosses would tell you to disappear a trailer or two, and by God you better do it.

They’d take care of you.

One way or another.

 

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She learned about martinis from her father.

Monsters he called them.

Give me another monster.

He insisted that they be served so cold that the chips of ice were still dissolving as you lifted it for the first cleansing sip.

If it isn’t cold, you’re just drinking a big glass of warm gin.

She holds the stem and lifts the glass to her mouth.

Not cold enough.

Doesn’t matter.

She takes two big swallows.

She can feel the white heat traveling down and down, across her chest, into her stomach.

The tension loosens.

“Another?” asks the barman.

“Please. But colder.”

 

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