Foreman Rusk's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Rusk had three days left on the contract and a crew that would walk by Friday if the pay ran short. He stood at the edge of the grove with the work order folded in his glove, its court seal stiff against his palm. The paper listed twenty numbered trees, a wage of one hundred per head, and penalties if he missed the count. Behind him, six men waited by the trucks. In front of him, the heartwood trees rose in dark red columns, their bark scored with old family markings that glowed faint green where the sap ran. A girl stood at the base of the oldest trunk. She had not moved since dawn. Rusk gave the order and the saws started. The first blade bit the heartwood, screamed once, and came out chipped along every tooth. His lead cutter swore and swapped in a fresh blade. That one lasted four minutes. By ten they had ruined six blades, and the stumps they had cut were bleeding a slow dark sap that would not dry. His men stopped pretending it was normal. One of them said the word magic out loud. Rusk pulled the work order from his glove and read the penalty clause again, because paper was the only thing that had ever paid him. He walked to the oldest trunk. The girl watched him come. He did not ask her name. He set his hand on the bark and felt the green veins pulse under his palm like something with a heartbeat. Then he looked at his crew — men with kids, men with debts, men who had trusted him to read the order right — and he made the call. He told the lead cutter to skip the marked trees and take the smaller ones at the edge, off the order, off the count. Undersized timber. Unstamped. It would move fast and it would not pay the full contract, but it would pay something by Friday. The girl did not speak. She only turned her head to follow him as he walked back to the trucks. By dusk they had felled four small trees and stacked them clean. The saws held. The crew got their advance and went quiet around the fire. Rusk sat with the ruined blade across his knees, its teeth chipped, its face streaked with dark sap and faint green scoring in circles he had not cut. He knew what he had done. He had come north to log a stamped grove under a court order, and he had walked away from the trees the paper named. The contract would come up short. The company would ask why. And somewhere behind him, in the dark, the girl was still standing at the oldest trunk, and she had seen his face.