Revved up by the possibilities, I made a mental note to ask our group all these questions and more. The sooner we could work as a team to design our village, the better. It would give us all something to do while we waited out the long winter.
As my arms fell into a rhythm of planned destruction, I kept my mind busy by imagining ways we could use spells to grow it all back even better. My favorite movies, which I’d never told anyone about except Damon because he was a LOTR nut too, was the Lord of the Rings trilogy and its prequel The Hobbit trilogy. In my opinion, the best parts were where they showed Lothlorien, the elven village that was magically erected along the steep sides of mountains. All the buildings in the movie featured these crazy, highly detailed, symmetrical Celtic-style weavings of tree branches that looked as if they’d been grown that way. Maybe something like that would look good here too.
We worked past dark, using the truck’s headlights to light our path. I think we all would have stopped by about one or two in the morning for sleep if we’d been working as individuals. But something about working as a team helped us push on past the exhaustion. Or maybe it was the thought of all those people counting on us that kept us going. We’d brought bottles of soda, six five-gallon gas cans, oil and sharpening tools for the saws, which also helped.
Around sunrise, we got our second or third wind, the growing daylight shining through the forest spurring us on. It was a beautiful area, and exciting to think that soon it would be our new home.
But by nine a.m., we were running out of gas and energy, even as determined as we were.
“Hey, guys,” I yelled over the whining of the saws.
One by one, they shut off the machines.
“How about we stop for awhile, grab a meal and some more gas and oil?”
Wearily, they brought the chainsaws back to the truck and I unhooked the chain from the back hitch. I tried not to cringe as we piled into the cab, our heavy boots knocking off clumps of muddy snow into the floorboards. Mentally I promised my truck a full bath inside and out someday soon as I drove us back into Spearfish.
We opted to eat at the local Perkins restaurant, where we plowed through what my mother would have called an unholy amount of cholesterol and pork fat with good sized dollops of ketchup and Tabasco sauce on the side. Then we had to chug more than a few pots of coffee to counter the food as all the blood rushed to our guts and turned our visions blurry.
To say we were pretty dang tired was an understatement.
The guys were all for taking a few packs of beer back with us to ease the pain of our overworked muscles. But I’d met some loggers with missing toes and fingers as a result of combining high speed cutting tools and alcohol. Not a good combination. Besides, buying alcohol might require one of us to show an ID. Also not a good idea for people on the run from the law. So we settled for ibuprofen, packs of cola and bags of gas station sandwiches for later. Then we headed back to the woods.
Our woods.
By that night, I was referring to them as “that God-awful group of trees,” with more than a few curse words thrown in there. My arms ached from lugging around a sixty-pound chainsaw and fighting tree after tree. My back ached like an old man’s, popping and creaking every time I moved, especially when I had to bend over to deal with the chains to drag the felled trees out of the way.
Finally, I’d had enough, and a glance around told me the others had too. I let out a loud whistle and made a slashing motion at my neck to signal it was break time. Then we all trudged back to the truck.
We sat on the tailgate, cooling off while we ate in silence and chugged down the caffeine as quickly as we could. But my body didn’t care how much caffeine I drank. I’d hit the point where it had no effect on me whatsoever.
I swore, scrubbing at my eyes. “All right. I know we all want to get this done. And I know a whole lot of people are counting on us. But if we don’t snag a few Z’s, somebody’s gonna end up cutting off something vital. And that ain’t gonna help anybody.” Geez, I was so tired I sounded drunk. I was actually slurring my words.
“I can keep—” One of the men began.
“Shut up, Harvey,” someone else said. “The kid’s right. Let’s rest a few hours.”
Harvey grumbled but climbed into the truck with the rest of us. I cranked the engine, set the timer on my watch for four hours from now, and we all promptly commenced to sawing a different kind of log.
Beeping, high pitched, quick, and extremely annoying, dragged me out of a deep and dreamless sleep. I reached out for my bedside alarm but found nothing but air. Somebody must have moved my clock. Probably Mom in an attempt to help me be on time for school for a change.
“Aw, come on, Ma. Ten more minutes,” I begged, reaching for my pillow so I could use it to drown out the noise.
No pillow, no Mom arguing back. Only male laughter. What the...?
I cracked one eye open then sat bolt upright as I realized I was in my truck a few thousand miles away from my old bedroom. With a bunch of older men who were snickering at me.
Scowling, I shut off the alarm on my watch, opened the driver side door and had to roll out of the cab. Holy crap, my whole dang body hurt!
Apparently I wasn’t the only one in pain as the other three doors opened and more groans and cussing filled the air.
“Aw, just ten more minutes, Mom,” Harvey whined then snickered again.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said with a grin then called him a name my mother would have smacked me on the back of my head for saying. My hands hurt too much to flip him off instead.
Laughing, Harvey and the others walked around to the front end of the truck to survey the woods ahead.
“How much further, Dad?” one of the others joked in a whiny, little kid voice.
Smiling, the oldest of our group scanned the area then said, “Probably another six or eight hours. If we work fast. And we’ll still have to squeeze the houses in pretty tight.”
“That could be a good thing,” I said, trying to picture four mobile homes packed into this area. “We can face their entrances in towards each other. It’ll add more shelter from the wind if we keep the outer perimeter of trees fairly close to the houses. And it’ll mean less area to have to hide with a cloaking effect, too.”
Grunts, either of agreement or disagreement, I couldn’t tell which and was frankly too tired to care either way.
“All right, let’s get her done,” I sighed, reaching for the chainsaw I’d recently come to view more as a torture device.