The Woodcutter
by Thomas Pease
(A version of this story won grand prize in the 2010 University of Alaska/Anchorage Daily News Creative Writing Contest.)
Cecil sat on the stone hearth in his boxer shorts. Out of habit, he’d taken off his work clothes outside and shaken the bark and wood chips from cuffs and pockets. Work attire now dried on a rack next to the hearth. His wool socks remained on, bunched around his sinewy calves to ward off the draft creeping across the floor. As the fire in the massive fireplace caught, flames curled around the front log and climbed up the crevasses behind, reaching for fuel higher on the stack.
Many times he’d sat here with his wife, Erma, enjoying fires as they caught. Gradually, the massive wall of rock became a furnace, and the heat forced them across the room. But now, quiet displaced the fire’s warmth, casting a chill that penetrated the center of the room. One year ago, on December 14th, Erma had died.
On that morning, Cecil flipped the light switch in the hallway and padded across the bedroom. With one knee on the bed, he leaned in to awaken Erma. Erma exhibited the same calmness in sleep as she did when awake. No kicks or flinches, no nasal snorts or restless dreams; just measured breaths and thin lips sealed in confidence. He placed a hand on her stomach and leaned down to kiss her forehead. Cecil stopped an inch above her face. His hand moved to her chest. He felt for breath against his cheek. He kissed Erma a final time, her lips rigid and unreciprocating.
Erma slipped away in that same understated way she had about her. The room was silent but unsettled, the bed tidy, but cold. An altered quietness rushed in to replace the previous peacefulness. It was a quietness tense with anticipation but yielded only emptiness.
Small explosions punctuated the silence as pockets of spruce sap heated and expanded. Sparks electrified the air. He turned stiffly to admire the fire. Nothing burned like dry Sitka spruce. A poor heat source, since it burned quickly. But oh how it generated spectacular flames. He smiled, but only for a moment before he turned and stared across the living room of the log home, mostly dark on this mid-December evening.
Now, alone, Cecil preferred the lights off. In the dark, flames projected light and shadow around the room, reflected off windows and log walls, the backs of plank bottom chairs and across the exposed beam ceiling. The evening fire reminded him of the yule log that he and Erma had planned to burn last solstice. The log was so large it would need to be split into fourths to fit the fireplace. Four yule logs in one, really. Now, a year later, he had yet to split it. Life had interrupted itself.
The yule log celebration developed early in their marriage. It grew out of Erma’s Scandinavian heritage, a tradition practiced on the winter solstice by her Norwegian relatives to welcome the light’s return. Her parents would light candles from the burning yule, one candle in memory of each departed parent. He and Erma continued the practice after their own parents died. The log’s ashes he would apply to icy walkways and spring garden beds. Any unburned portion of the log they saved to start the next year’s yule. This year, Cecil would light just one candle.
* * * * *
It had been 20 years since Cecil retired. Twenty years since he reclaimed his freedom from the government as Cecil put it. Ample time to establish a personal routine, a predictable day. He’d worn pathways through the woods similar to those formed by snowshoe hares that sheltered beneath his brush piles. In summer, his paths often led to some sort of excavation— one to shore up the foundation, another to replace a burned out well pump, a third to install a new septic tank. Friends nicknamed him “Backhoe,” with emphasis on the back. These same friends remained a safe distance from the edge of any hole for fear of being tossed a shovel.
In fall, Cecil travelled paths with wheelbarrow-loads of potatoes and carrots from his garden, and with mulch for Erma’s delphinium and peonies. After freeze-up, before the snow got deep, he skidded logs in from the woods to burn in his stone fireplace. In spring, when the snow turned rotten and the ground softened, he worked in his wood shop, not wanting to damage the ground that served as his road map the rest of the year. Cecil’s life was inscribed into this 25 acres obtained through a government auction when he first came to Alaska.
His wood piles extended like farmer’s rows along the north edge of his woodlot. Each pile was shoulder high, perfectly leveled, and covered with a sheet of corrugated roofing repurposed from the old horse barn. Years worth of split and stacked firewood provided Cecil a sense of security and a source of pride. It wasn’t just the sheer volume of wood he cut that gave him satisfaction. It was also the size of the logs, one-and-a-half axe handles long— long enough to span the iron rails that held the logs in the fireplace. Next to his wood piles lay the magnificent yule log, an artifact that spanned generations, that recorded historical events, that locked whispered secrets deep within its heartwood.
Cecil gained an appreciation for trees early on when he helped his father skid lodgepole pine and Douglas fir behind a team of Percherons to feed a hungry sawmill. Then, at 22, Cecil put a forestry degree to work, scaling timber and running surveys for the U.S. Forest Service. Except for an interruption during the War, Cecil worked in government forestry for 40 years. He’d never moved beyond GS-6 on the salary schedule because the forest was where he wanted to be. Promotions required office work.
Appropriately, Cecil bought himself a Husqvarna chainsaw as a retirement gift. (What was he supposed to do with that gold pan from the office, anyway?) The new Husky replaced his beloved Homelite chainsaw, the unmufflered beast that had stolen his hearing. He adjusted quickly to the lighter, quieter machine and the latest features: automatic bar oiler, chain brake, decompression start switch. Retirement was like a favorite pair of Carhartt work pants that required incremental adjustments to fit the altered wearer. Before long, like pants after a few wearings, the new saw felt comfortable in his hands.
* * * * *
For the first 19 years of retirement, Cecil rose early, folding back the corner of the down comforter just enough for his legs to clear, quick to retuck the bedding before a draft disrupted Erma’s sleep. The wooden floor creaked as he traveled to the kitchen in the clean wool socks he slept in. He paused in the hallway to nudge the thermostat up to 60. The wood stove provided the remaining warmth. With the kettle heating, he pulled on outerwear and worn out work boots he’d trimmed down to slip-ons. He liked awakening to brisk, winter mornings when the sun was still four hours from rising. Darkness obscured the forest, but surveying its periphery gave sufficient pleasure. The white birches glowed in the blackness, marking the path to the newspaper box.
Back at the kitchen table, Cecil would enjoy the paper over yesterday’s reheated coffee. Between each article, he would pass another ladleful of hot water over fresh grounds. Once the coffee was brewed, he would fetch Erma. He always awakened her with background light from the hallway and a kiss on the forehead. Sometimes, when feeling impish, he’d pass his coffee mug under her nose. She’d arise nimbly, stretch the bed spread over the pillows, throw on her robe and fluff her wavy hair with her fingers. She’d never been one to fuss in front of a mirror. Poodling, she called it. What you’re born with is what you’ve got was her philosophy. And his too. No use trying to reshape nature. Erma hadn’t needed to, from Cecil’s perspective. It was her natural beauty that he’d noticed upon returning from the War, high cheekbones and aquamarine eyes, square shoulders and a strong build, neither heavy nor frail. He had no idea what she’d been wearing on their first meeting. It was the way she carried herself, silently but confidently, that he’d noticed. She had moved around the kitchen in the same efficient silence, whipping up omelets and sourdough pancakes.
* * * * *
Last spring, Cecil followed through on Erma’s directive, although he never imagined he’d be the one performing it. Erma had never been sick beyond a scratchy throat. He always figured she’d be the one burying him. He dug another hole, this one modest, unnoticed, at the foot of her bench. He’d crafted it from Sitka spruce. Light, but strong. Simple, but utilitarian. Here, seated in her patient manner, Erma would coax black-capped chickadees to eat from her hand. He poured Erma’s ashes into the hole from her favorite cookie tin. Her ashes mixed with layers of volcanic ash that ringed the sides of the hole, like growth rings on a tree, a geologic time capsule.
Cecil shared Erma’s approach. He hadn’t occupied any space in this world before he entered it; he wouldn’t take up any space when he exited. And nobody would profit from his death. He’d selected a cross-section of old growth spruce to note his existence. By the time the dense heartwood rotted, the last people who remembered him would be gone. The spongy loam that remained would nurture the next generation of saplings. He’d told only Erma his wishes. Now, he would need to write them down.
No, Erma was to outlive him, to be the final old growth left standing. Starting about three years ago, she’d insisted on scheduling Cecil’s doctors’ appointments. She reminded him to take his medication, to take a break from a project, to remember to eat. She’d deliver warm muffins or a phone message to him in the woodlot, a wellness check more than anything. Her pestering was like the safety chaps he refused to wear when running his saw. Now, he missed that quiet insistence.
* * * * *
Cecil watched the light dance around the living room. Solstice was a week away. Tomorrow, he would split the yule log. The gnarly log was the butt of a beetle-killed spruce he felled two years earlier. He’d buried his saw bar from opposite sides but was unable to cut through the broad base. A steady stream of wood chips spewed out the back of his saw and down his thigh. He’d finally driven a wedge into one of the cuts to fell the old tree.
Old-growth Sitka spruce is the toughest wood in Alaska. It is stronger by weight than any other wood. In fact, it is so strong, pound for pound, that Sitka spruce was the preferred material for masts on sailing ships like those Cecil’s grandfather sailed. During the War, the crashed fighter planes Cecil marched past had exposed wing spars made of Sitka spruce. Now, musicians sought Sitka spruce for sounding boards like the one in the piano that Erma had played by ear. Beetle-killed spruce seasoned on the stump is the hardest spruce, a hardness that dulls a chainsaw after just a few cuts. Splitting this yule could require much of the limited daylight. But Cecil had plenty of time.
Not only did Cecil have no place to be, he had no way to get there. He’d lost his driving privileges shortly after Erma died. He dozed off at the town’s main intersection and rolled through a red light in his Ford pick-up. Now, Cecil only drove the dirt roads skirting his wood lot when he needed to bring in firewood.
At least he hadn’t given up his chainsaw. He’d come close. Cecil ran his fingers over a raised, zig-zag scar on his leg. Shortly after the driving incident, Cecil was bucking up some windfall when he got careless. Midway through a cut, his saw tip contacted a pile of discarded limbs. The Husqvarna kicked straight back. In the time it took to remove his finger from the throttle, the saw cut through Cecil’s Carhartts and into his thigh. Not one to leave tools in the woods, Cecil limped back to the shop. He blew sawdust from the air filter with compressed air, lubed the tip sprocket, tightened the chain, and topped off the gas and bar oil before returning to the house. He’d driven to the doctor. At first, Cecil told the doctor he’d fallen while shoveling his roof, but the doctor wouldn’t hear it. “I know chainsaw wounds. They’re jagged, difficult to clean, nasty to stitch.”
He rose slowly off the floor, pausing briefly on his knees as the doctor recommended to avoid dizziness. He tucked himself in as he stood. Cecil gazed across the darkened room as he prepared a mental checklist for the morning. He brought in tools from the porch. In the old horse bucket, he submerged the splitting maul with the loosened head. He lay three steel wedges on newspaper inside the door. Cold steel could chip on impact when the temperature dropped below zero. The Husqvarna sat on another piece of newspaper. He wouldn’t need it tomorrow, but once he did, the saw required pre-heating to start in the cold. He removed the laces from his mid-calf boots and rubbed SnoSeal into the leather. The boots he placed on the hearth, the heated leather absorbing the grease overnight. The remaining grease he worked into his own hands, hands like boot leather that dried out quickly in northern desert air.
The next morning, arising early as usual, Cecil shuffled through an altered morning routine. Meals had been a focal point, a combination of warm conversation and savory flavors. Although he and Erma shared duties around the house, Cecil never got the hang of cooking. He traded out his half of the cooking for all the dish washing. Erma churned out hearth bread and hearty winter stews and flaky pie crusts as efficiently as pulling frozen dinners from a box.
Frozen dinners he could never eat. Recently, a concerned neighbor left a case of them inside the arctic entry after commenting on how thin Cecil looked. He’d even tried one, a chicken Alfredo, heated on the wood stove, since he didn’t own a microwave. It was starchy, with a bland white sauce and no chicken he could find, even when he dredged the bottom of the tin with a fork. He unloaded the frozen dinners he’d stacked like cord wood in the freezer and returned them to the arctic entry. The next day, he thawed the dinners on the wood stove, a half dozen at a time, and set them in the yard for the ravens. Erma had loved everything about ravens, their sleek feathers and the way they spoke in tongues, their barrel rolls and their vertical leaps from ground to flight. He only got about half the foil tins back. The ravens cached the shiny objects in their treasure boxes beneath the snow.
Since Erma’s death, he’d tried to cook. But food didn’t have much taste anymore. He mostly ate standing over the sink. He swallowed his pill for high blood pressure. Then, he peeled two hard-boiled eggs, slicing them one bite at a time, balancing each slice on the blade of his pocketknife as he brought it to his mouth. Dishwashing meant rinsing the same cup and plate and returning them to the dish drainer. His routine had changed. That second cup of morning coffee tasted bitter now.
As he waited for the eastern sky to lighten over the mountains, he toweled off the head of the splitting maul, the hickory handle having swelled and tightened nicely overnight. He sat once more on the hearth, the maul propped vertically between his legs. With a palm-sized sharpening stone, he smoothed out the burrs, mindful not to hone too thin an edge that could fold over on a spruce knot.
He laid out everything he needed within arm’s reach of the door. Once his boots were on, there was no going back inside. Even in Erma’s absence, it was a shoes-off house.
Because he wouldn’t be venturing into the woods today, he did not need to pack a lunch or matches or hot water in a thermos. He dressed in layers against the cold. His leather chopping mitts gripped the wedges and the splitting maul. The remaining tools he’d get from the shop. His boots squeaked on the snow-packed path. His bushy eyebrows iced up with frozen breath. Erma always threatened to trim them during his monthly haircuts. The cold, dry air burned the insides of his nostrils. He continued to breathe deeply through his nose just the same. The brisk air was like smelling salts, producing alertness, vigor, life.
He’d always savored the cold and the solitude. The cold still agreed with him, but the solitude had betrayed him. Friends and family died or migrated south for warmer winters or to be near the kids and grandkids. At his age, moving away meant never seeing them again. In the fall, Cecil’s last remaining childhood friend left Alaska for Arizona, announcing he was tired of trying to pull three inches of pecker through six inches of clothing. Cecil would never leave. Alaska was where he belonged. Anywhere else and you couldn’t pull it out at all without getting arrested for indecent exposure.
A niece tried to help Cecil stay connected. She set Cecil up with his first computer and an email account and showed him how to send and receive. Cecil conceded it was an easy way to keep in touch without burning through a book of stamps. Today’s technology amazed him. But his address book amounted to one remaining college classmate, two surviving members of his platoon, and his childhood friend. The Internet was a good source for replacement saw parts. Otherwise, the box remained off.
Cecil packed down a spot near the yule log. Then, he drained the last of the coffee from his bladder. He couldn’t tolerate interruptions once he started. In swinging his sledgehammer, he developed a rhythm, a practiced travel and reach that found the center of the wedge every time. Stopping even briefly caused him to cool down, to focus on the interruption itself, to deliver a glancing blow that could break off the edge of a wedge, or cause him to overreach and shatter a handle.
He pried the yule from the frozen ground with a peavey, a pointed lever with a hooked jaw used to bite and turn a log. He brushed snow from the log and chipped off an underlying layer of ice with short axe strokes. Beneath the bark lay holes surrounded by sawdust, evidence of what killed the spruce. Beetles.
The logs Cecil split for the fireplace were too long to split on end, so he split them on their sides instead. He kicked wooden wedges beneath opposite sides of the yule to keep it from rolling. Cecil took several warm-up swings with the maul, just to test the waters. The sound on impact and the vibrations in the handle revealed where the knots and twists and vulnerable pockets lay. The handle shuddered on first contact. A tight spiral to the grain perhaps. Or a remnant branch that had broken off and scabbed over. Each swing emitted varying thuds. Through them, Cecil mapped out a mental image of the woody configuration beneath the bark.
He removed his Carhartt coat. Cecil preferred working on the cool side in a hoody with the sleeves cut off. He rolled his watchman’s cap above his ears. The girth of the log was so great that Cecil needed additional height to gain leverage. He stood a stump upright and leveled it. Stepping onto the stump, Cecil rocked back and forth to check for stability. He was ready.
He started the first wedge at the near end, in a crease made by the maul. He took a couple of measured swings before entering full roundhouses, alternating two swings over his left shoulder, then two swings over his right. Changing sides worked one set of muscles while resting the other. The first wedge disappeared into the log without so much as a fracture on the outer bark. But he’d expected this log to be stubborn. He crouched and eyed the log, following the twist and pin-pointing the spot to start his second wedge.
Every event in a tree’s life produces scar tissue— a knot, a burl, a growth spiral difficult to penetrate. The young birch and poplar he split for stove wood had straight grain that seemed to cleave and stack itself into piles. Old spruce, on the other hand, wore its resiliency like a suit of armor. Cecil resumed his rhythmic swings, letting the second wedge weaken the log’s fibrous clinch. The steel-on-steel pulse resonated throughout the woods, gradually becoming muted as the giant log swallowed the second wedge without opening a gap.
Cecil was down to his last wedge. Were he to bury it, there’d be no way to pry open the gnarled log. He angled the third wedge toward the buried wedge closest to him. He hoped to contact it with the driving wedge, knocking one or both out the end. On the fourth swing, he felt the wedges collide. He also watched the gap widen with each blow. He drove the third wedge home, and both wedges shot out the end. With two fewer wedges in place, Cecil also watched the gap spring shut like a trap, erasing evidence of any progress.
He rolled the log 90 degrees to follow the grain. The peavey turned the log easily in its blocks, although the log proved a mouthful for its hooked jaw. Cecil followed the twist toward the middle of the log, where he sunk another wedge. This wedge opened a gap wide enough to sever the woody tendons with his axe. The log emitted creaks and moans as the axe sliced. He knocked the exposed wedges loose with his hammer. One last, well-placed wedge should finish the job.
He made another incision to start the final wedge, to deliver the coup de gras. Cecil took a couple of measured swings straight overhead to find his reach, then switched into alternating roundhouses. The hammer rang, starting on a high note and dropping in pitch as each blow sank the wedge deeper into the log. Cecil watched the gap jump with every swing. The log yawned but no longer sprang back, like a spreading smile that can’t return to a previous, solemn moment.
He broke into song, a song he and his comrades sang during troop transports across Southern France by train. As he belted out the verses from deep within his diaphragm, he detected a tingle in his left arm, similar to the carpal tunnel symptoms he felt after running his saw all day. The numbness that awakened him at night never bothered him much. It indicated an honest day’s work, his hands contracted into half fists, as if gripping an axe or a saw in his sleep. This tingling was different. It came mid-swing. The weight across his shoulders and chest exceeded the 12-pound sledge he swung. He switched sides, thinking he might have strained a muscle. The pain increased. He missed badly. The hammer ricocheted off the inside of the log and caught him in the shin. The blow did not double him over. Instead, all the pain concentrated in his chest and down one arm. He leaned on his hammer handle, took quick, shallow breaths. The puffs collected as frost on his gray stubble. As he leaned forward, he noticed the yule log splayed open, its sallow heartwood rock hard, but exposed.
Cecil swayed in slow motion, as he’d seen so many trees do when he made that final cut. He’d watch the top to determine the direction of fall, alert for a widow-maker or a rotten branch breaking away. Most importantly, he’d watch the top to determine the direction he needed to retreat. Only this time, no escape route presented itself. The swaying stopped. Then, Cecil spun and fell backward across the yule log. Above him, the spruce canopy provided his final view. Heartwood recorded his final moment.
