Nekomah Creek (12 page)

Orin fell back. “Oh …” He made his voice all sweetsy. “Robby’s got a girlfriend.” Then he started singing it. “Robby’s got a girlfriend! Robby’s got a girlfriend!”

My face burned. Rose
is
a girl and she’s a friend. But he made it sound like something to be ashamed of. But if I went “Do not!” I’d hurt her feelings.

So what I did was … nothing. I just pretended I was suddenly interested in foursquare after all. This worked, in a way. At least I wasn’t getting pounded.

Orin kept it up. “Robby’s got a girlfriend!” He
looked around, trying to get the others to join him, but nobody did. Finally he gave up and went off after Cody Riddle and Nathan Steckler, these two fifth-grade guys he always tags behind.

“Bunch of babies!” he yelled back over his shoulder.

  8  

Two o’clock that afternoon—every pair of eyes rested on Elvis Downard, sitting up there in front of the class for Job Day like a visiting famous person.

“Logging,” he said, “is the most dangerous occupation there is. They got fancy studies now that say so. Big surprise. More guys get killed out in the woods than in any other job. ’Course anybody who’s worked on a logging show could tell ’em that. They don’t call those dangling snags widow-makers for nothing.” He turned his hard hat over in his big, scarred-up hands. “Y’see, a hard hat’s one thing. A big old Doug fir coming at you’s another.”

You could have heard a pin drop. No smart remarks to Elvis Downard. No way. Everybody had
been completely respectful the whole time he told about his job. He was a faller, the guy with the chain saw, the one standing by the tree when it started to go.

I stole a peek at Orin. He saw me and returned a look of calm satisfaction.
Top this
, his smirk said.

I went back to the tree I was doodling on the back of an old math ditto. It was chopped and falling over. TIMBBBEEERR! I lettered. I glanced at the back of Orin’s buzz-shaved head. I’d fix him. I drew him into the picture as a little groundhog, running away from the tree, looking back over his shoulder, eyes bugged out and scared.

“Besides trusting the guy working beside you, the next thing us loggers count on is our equipment.” Mr. Downard held up his cork boots with the hob nails for walking in the woods, He explained how his pants were cut off with no hem that could catch in the brush. And of course he showed off his chain saw.

Back when I was little, I heard West’s dad, Berk, calling someone a logger like it was a nasty name. For a while, I even thought it was some sort of swear word. But my folks finally set me straight. They said Berk just got carried away sometimes. They worried about too many trees being cut down too, they said, but it wasn’t fair to blame the loggers themselves. Dad said loggers were just trying to do their jobs like everyone else.

Now, while Elvis Downard was talking, I tried
drawing him. I’d never seen him up close before. His skin was tanned to leather and crinkly around his eyes—all that squinting up at the treetops. His chest was broad behind his red suspenders, and his arms—well, he looked like he could wrestle an elk to the ground by its antlers.

Of course I’d seen him lots from a distance. I had to pass their place if I rode my bike down into Nekomah Creek. Sometimes on the weekends I’d see him taking a chain saw to a pile of firewood logs in his turnaround.

Now a chain saw gets the job done all right, but it sounds awful. Elvis Downard liked noise, though. He had a riding lawnmower to use on their town-type yard. Also a motorcycle, an all-terrain vehicle, a dune buggy, and a bunch of snarly dogs. Seems like the Downards didn’t feel they could work
or
play right unless everybody on the road could hear them.

So there were things I didn’t like about Elvis Downard. On the other hand, I had to envy Orin this: If you had a dad like Elvis Downard and somebody said, “My dad can whip your dad,” you could say, “No, he can’t!” and sure as heck mean it.

I wasn’t the only one in awe of him, either. The whole class was. And at least for today, Orin was getting a share of this respect too, just for being the son of such an impressive guy. People had
been unusually quiet while Orin read his part of the Job Day report.

“That was wonderful, Elvis,” Mrs. Perkins said when he’d wrapped it up. “Any questions, class?”

“Mr. Downard,” Ben said, “have you ever had any close calls yourself? I mean with rolling logs and like that?”

Elvis Downard showed his teeth in a slow smile. “Don’t know anybody who’s been in the woods as many years as I have who hasn’t.”

Darrel Miskowiec stuck up his arm, fingers spread wide. “My dad’s a logger, too,” he said. “Name’s Ed Miskowiec.”

“Sure, son.” Elvis Downard winked. “I know your dad. Choker setter, isn’t he? Risky business.”

Darrel flushed with pride, his eyes making a quick sweep of the room. He wanted it understood that his dad was the same kind of tough guy as Orin’s.

But I remembered Darrel’s dad as nice more than tough. Last year he took our class on a hike to see where they were planting the new trees. He told how Darrel’s mom worked at the tree farm, packing up seedlings that were sent out to start the new forests. That stuck in my mind. Thousands and thousands of baby trees. Now there was a job to make you feel like part of something big!

Amber raised her hand. “My dad drives a log truck.”

“Does not,” Darrel said.

“Well, he used to,” Amber shot back. “I’ve even ridden in one.”

Calmly, quietly, Rose put up her hand. “Are many women becoming loggers these days?”

Some of the boys snickered. Elvis Downard just kind of chuckled and scratched the back of his head.

“Frankly,” he said, “I don’t think there’s too many women could handle it. Not too many men, either, for that matter.”

I slumped lower in my seat and started another dreary doodle, picturing
my
dad, standing in front of the class, explaining how to do diapers. I cringed at the thought. And then I felt crummy about being embarrassed. I mean, changing diapers is a pretty important job too, right? Just think what would happen if they
didn’t
get changed!

Still, when Mrs. Perkins assigned a report on either a job we’d like to do someday or a job our parents did now, it didn’t even occur to me to write about being a dad. And I was the one who’d argued to the counselor that taking care of babies was a real job, right?

My report was about being an artist, both because of my mom and because that’s what I wanted to do.

I blinked at my doodling. I’d drawn a ducky diaper
pin without even knowing it! I quickly scribbled it out.

Rose made a warning face at me. I was getting too obvious with my drawing. I sneaked a peek at Mrs. Perkins. No problem there. She was devoting her full attention to Elvis Downard as he went on with more stories.

“Why, one time we had a guy up there topping a big old fir and it starts to split …”

I’d never seen Mrs. Perkins like this—cheerful. I sighed. She wouldn’t be wondering if Orin’s family was okay, if his father was the way fathers ought to be. Her husband was probably a logger too.

I was starting to wish I’d lied and said I wanted to be an airplane pilot or something when I grew up.

Before, I’d been looking forward to showing off some of Mom’s printed-up greeting cards. It always bothered me that only a few gift shops carried them. I wanted more of the kids to see them. But now, as far as my report went … Well, telling about painting pictures for art galleries was going to sound awfully wimpy after this. A nice thing for a mom to do, maybe, but not a goal I felt like bragging about for myself. I mean, it isn’t the least bit dangerous.

“Thank you so much for coming in,” Mrs. Perkins told Elvis Downard when he’d finished. “Class?”

An enthusiastic chorus of thank-yous followed him out the door.

“Now.” Mrs. Perkins turned around, all flushed. “We have time for one more report. Let’s see … Robert Hummer?”

Oh, no. I knew I couldn’t do it. Not right after this.

I mumbled that I wasn’t ready.

“What’s that, Robert? Speak up.”

“I said I’m sorry, but my report isn’t finished.”

Mrs. Perkins’s eyebrows went together. She tapped the eraser end of her pencil on her desk blotter, her glow fading.

Go ahead, I thought. Give me any kind of look you want. It’s better than having Orin and everybody laughing at me.

I hung my head.

  9