Rod Lindsey, Storyteller

As a kid Jesse had ridden with Alan on logging roads including some that she knew had remained largely unused since those days, becoming overgrown and washed out in the years since the spotted owls got their political mojo up.  Sometimes Jesse’s friend, Billiejean Wisdom, and Christine, all three had crowded into Alan’s cab and ridden along on those backcountry excursions, but mostly it was Jesse.  Endangered and supposedly needing every board foot of timber still standing on the Olympic Peninsula to survive, the owls ultimately gave loggers the boot with a swipe of President Clinton’s pen; after that Alan took a three-year detour into booze, pot, and truckstop hookers, took a couple of hard swipes at Jesse’s mother, and then went missing for a couple of weeks until his dead-as-roadkill body was found by hikers along one of those largely unused backcountry logging roads.

            Jesse seldom thought about Alan.  Christine couldn’t seem to quit.