Balance
Clack-clack, clack-clack…clack-clack – clack-clack, clack-clack…the
thirty-car Rayonier logging train
snaked its way downhill from the sizing and grading yard at Black Pass to the
sorting and holding yard in Hoquiam, its steel wheels seeming to tap coded
messages as they rolled over joints in the track, the rails telling tales of
great trees from long ago, survivors of fires, floods, and pestilence eons before
man and axe ever saw these woods, felled and hauled away in a mere blip of
earthtime; this particular tale was being tapped-out on a warm and humid
evening in the summer of 1995:
Twilight had set, full dark was
coming, and Jesse Vega’s three-girl gang was riding the logs, a
strictly-forbidden favorite pastime of theirs.
Fourteen-year-old Christine was sitting up on top of the load and holding
on to a log’s loose bark for dear life.
Bolder and braver Jesse with tagalong Billiejean, both fifteen-years-old,
were down lower on one of the lengthier logs that extended well past the
cradles – they rode like perched ravens, cantilevered out over the couplers between
the cars where the longest log almost touched logs protruding from the cars
ahead and behind, the space between them a treacherous place constantly flexing
wider and then narrower as curves were negotiated by the train, rough stobs
swiping past each other with the promise of Poe’s pendulum.
“What do you think the rails are saying?” Billiejean
Wisdom asked Jesse, practically yelling her head off just to be heard.
“They’re saying if this train doesn’t get across the skinny
and rickety Queets
River
“I’m not scared!” Billiejean protested.
“Oh yes you are. No
fibbing allowed.”
Jesse stood up and turned loose with her hands. Balancing atop the cantilevered end of a sizeable
log, she looked up at her white-knuckled sister sitting on top of the load. Filled with wicked glee, she glanced back at
the last few cars following them around a bend, and then, with a little hop, she
turned and looked ahead as they rounded another wide curve, seeing the train
stretching out ahead and behind, the entire quarter-mile-long rail-car ribbon of
logs that had been living trees only a week or two ago. Mimicking a soaring raptor staking her claim
to the forest, she extended her arms out to her sides like wings with fingers at
their tips instead of feathers. The wind
in her face dusty and smelling of cedar and tamarack, she screamed like a
screeching red-tailed hawk, her spirit guide according to
Billiejean’s grandmother, “Skeee! Skeee!”
Billiejean’s grandmother, “Skeee! Skeee!”
“Cut it out, Jesse!” Billiejean cried. “You’ll fall!”
“Not me! Watch
this!”
Without further warning Jesse took two quick steps and
leaped across the treacherous space between cars onto the rough stob of the longest
log protruding from the car ahead, waving her arms to catch her balance as she
landed.
Billiejean screamed, “Jesseeeee!” at the top of her lungs while the rails kept on tapping
out their code, repeating clack-clack, clack-clack
– clack-clack, clack-clack.
“Hey! What’s going
on?” Christine demanded, raising her head up, long blonde hair blowing all directions
at once in a zillion tangles, her eyes squeezed shut.
“Jesse jumped! She
jumped ahead!” Billiejean yelled hysterically, pointing and tattling on her
friend. “She could’ve fallen!”
“I’m not gonna fall, you big chickenshits!” Jesse hollered
back to her so-called posse. Then she leaped across the open space again, returning
to where she had been, Billiejean grabbing and hugging her furiously while beating
her fists against her back.
Christine peeked out from under a hand over her eyes,
yelled, “Stop showing off, Jesse!” with all the overdone petulance she could
muster considering the chaotic circumstances, and Jesse laughed, plopping down
to sit atop the log while Billiejean wailed “Not funny!” giving Jesse’s
shoulder a hefty girl-gang punch for good measure and sitting down beside her
with her brows knitted into half-hitches.
Jesse had often wondered since that day how differently
things would’ve turned out if Billiejean had just stayed put and pouted. But the path never is a straight one, and
even the best of minions will sometimes wander…
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