Dougy

I cut my firewood this week and remembered Dougy,



Dougy



Last winter, for the first time in my life, I had too much firewood. I cut it in the fall and now it’s split and stacked in the utility room and the back yard and by the gate and by the driveway. I even gave some away. I drove my little pick up to a place in the mountains called Keeney meadows which is the best, closest place around here to get firewood and I tourtured the timber.




My pickup is a little under powered and has a messed up front door on the drivers side from the time I left it open and fell a tree on it. Luckily the tip of the tree was all that hit the door so it didn’t tear it off the hinge. It sags really bad, kind of like a bird with a dislocated wing. I fixed it the best I could but it still has a big dent in it. My wife hates it because she thinks it makes us look poor, but I think it looks macho. I finally took the drivers side rear view mirror off because the bolts came loose and wallered out the holes so it remained quite wobbly no matter how much wire I used to help secure it. There is also the place on the front mud guard under the chrome bumper where I hooked a choker cable around when I pulled it out of the woods with a D4 Cat. By the time I was home free the choker had sucked down tight and ripped a long, jagged, horizontal gash in the mud guard. Now, it looks like my little pick up has a shark mouth. A junior high kid I know described my pick up as, and I quote, “gross.” It is the perfect wood getting truck. It’s small so you don’t have to work your tail off to fill it up with a good load of wood. You spend the better part of your time drinking coffee and eating chocolate snacks on the way up and back which is nice, especially if it happens to be snowing sideways. Although small, if you really try you can grossly overload the pick up and come back with a pretty impressive jag of wood. It’s downhill all the way home. The citizens of Mt Vernon never really let on that they were impressed but some of them did remark about the size of my woodpile, which caused me to swell with pride although I always blamed it on the chocolate.




I pretty much disliked wood cutting until last fall when I was forced to get my entire supply before they shut the woods down in November. When I lived on the ranch I got my wood as I needed it because it was right out the back door and easy picking. But now, living in Mt Vernon I have to get my wood from the national forest, which required permits. But the wood is of much better quality and I would learn to love good firewood, although getting wood was, as near as I could tell, work and I am not particularly fond of working when I could be out trapping chasing coyotes, or fishing or hunting or writing about it. But my friend and back yard neighbor Dougy offered to go with me and show me the best places to get firewood, and he brought most of the victuals. Although he is somewhat of a health food nut I ate just about all his food and drank most of his distilled water because I wanted him to feel welcome as a guest.




Our first load was somewhat of a half-hearted attempt on my part. To save work I cut the wood a little long not wanting to run the saw any more than necessary and forgetting that the length of my wood stove is about sixteen inches. Dougy made the comment that he thought perhaps I was cutting fence posts which I thought was pretty funny coming from a man who’s neighbor had just eaten all of his organic cheese puffs. Also, somewhat in denial I had elected to wear my Romeo’s to get the first load because throughout the course of the summer I had chosen to forget how much work getting firewood is and how steep the ground can be and also how quick slippers fill up with sawdust. And somehow the head fell off of Doug’s splitting mall when I was using it. It thought it was a weird coincidence because I had just broken the handle too.




On the way back we were only able to travel at a top speed of thirty five miles an hour because I had neglected to fill my tires with air. Under the weight of a fairly good load we swayed back and forth like an over loaded barge in rough seas. I could tell by the nervous look in Dougy’s eyes that I had made quite an impression on him. Fortunately, my wife fed him a big dinner that night. He happily joined me for more loads throughout the course of the fall.




As autumn wore on I began to enjoy our wood gathering expeditions into the mountains and even became obsessed with the idea that there was wood up there for the taking and if we didn’t get it some other Mt Vernonite would. I made trip after trip, sometimes with my family, sometimes with Dougy or another friend and sometimes by myself and I am happy to report I only lost my chainsaw once. I had been king around looking for the perfect tree and having picked a so-so candidate I stopped to sharpen, oil and gas up my saw. Afterwards I decided that the tree I had chosen was marginal and I began hearing voices. Actually it was one voice, the voice of a tree. A Tamarack “Oh Yooohooo.” The tree whispered. Did you forget about me?” The voice groaned lasciviously. “I’m straight and I'm tall and I’m…”




“Yes, gulp,” I said, What, what?




“I’m standing, dead!” Suddenly I remembered the straight grained, dead-standing-beauty that was calling me. She was just up the road a couple miles. Such was my passion, I threw in my saw and chose not to take the time to close the tailgate. As I roared up to the tree I jumped out and went to grab my saw but it was gone. It was then I knew exactly what I must do, so without hesitation, I panicked. Leaping into my pickup I fishtailed wildly up and down the road searching desperately, franticly, and at one point, not noticing a particularly high bump, airborne. The dread of replacing a seven hundred-dollar saw was only enhanced by the thought of reporting my folly to my wife Linda, who would most likely cost more than seven hundred dollars to replace. When I returned home, I was clinically depressed. “How was wood cutting honey?” She said. “I’m thinking about committing suicide.” I wimpered.




“That’s nice,” she said. “Don’t track mud in the house.” She calmly put an ad on the local radio while I slumped into the corner, sucking my thumb in the fetal position. The next day a kind fellow who had been grouse hunting in the area returned my saw.




Challenges like this only strengthened my resolve to cut more wood. I became a fanatic. Early in the morning I would rise, sharpen, oil and gas up my saw, clean her air filter, clean my pickup, air the tires and shut the tailgate. The Blue angels take less care in pre-flighting their fighter jets than I did in preparation for a day of wood gathering. Once prepared, I called Doug.


Me: “Good morning ol’ boy. Ain’t it a beauty? Listen, I’ve got gas and my tailgate’s shut!”

Dougy: “Is this some kind of an obscene phone call?”

Me: “Saw’s sharp, tires aired and I’ll be by to pick you up in five. Any questions?”

Dougy: “Just one. Who is this?”

Me: “Don’t be funny, you know exactly who this is!”

Dougy, “No speaky de spanglish.”

Me: “Nice try Dougy, but it’s too beautiful of a day to waste laying around in bed.”

Dougy: “It’s three o’clcok in the morning for Pete sake!

Me: “I’ll take you out for breakfast!”

Dougy: “The restaurant won’t be open for two hours.”

Me: “I’ll come over and we’ll eat your food. Got any more of those organic cheese puffs?”




Dougy had a certain flair and style all his own. He was a sweet, ragamuffin like fellow. His dark brown, long hair was a little messy and he usually kept the top button of his jeans unbuttoned although I don’t really know why because he was slender. Sometimes he wore suspenders and left the tails of his flannel shirt un-tucked causing them to get kind of bunched up but he never seemed to notice. In contrast, he operated a chain saw with meticulous precision; the tip of the bar never touched the dirt when Doug was running it. Dougy was an unusually and wildly hard worker. He was slim and not tall, but he was solid muscle, and very strong. He was never really at home in Mt Vernon, not because he didn’t belong but because just two years earlier he had lost his sweet little wife to cancer. He had struggled since Lisa died. She was the love of his life. All he ever really wanted was to be with her again. But he kept himself busy helping people, and driving a log truck for Kenny Speakman, a logger who we both had worked for on different occasions. Slowly but surely Doug was coming back to life. He had even packed up some of Lisa’s stuff in boxes. He hadn’t touched it in two years since her death.




Nowdays a gentle smile gleamed underneath Dougy’s mustache and he usually had a twinkle in his eyes, especially when I was doing something humorous such as breaking his splitting maul. He was a nice guy and trustworthy. We had a hole in the fence between our yards through which I would send my four-year-old son Wade whenever I needed to borrow something. Dougy was not only trustworthy in that I could entrust him with my young son, but also in that he only tried to fix the fence once, and he didn’t try very hard. We made a fine team, united by our covetous lust for firewood, which we suitably entitled “Wood Greed.” It was our own private, insider joke. Most men lust for money and power and women but we lusted after firewood.




What were once half-hearted attempts at gathering wood became well prepared forays into the woodlands to extract the straight grained tamarack and red fir bounty. No longer did we hack up a haphazard load and toss it indiscriminately in the back of my pickup. We became hagridden with an insatiable urge to find dead standing firewood logs, cut them with fastidiousness and even take precious time to hand hew the rounds in order to make a tight stack with no voids. I have seen fancy ski lodges that were slapped together with less care than the loads we hauled out of the woods. The wood was stacked as high as possible with ultimate care, then tied down hard and fast with a lariat rope. Once, when we ran out of saw gas, we broke off the last twenty feet of a tamarack snag by means of hacking it with a little hand axe and jumping madly up and down on it until it snapped, because, although there was no room left in the pickup, I wasn’t about to let the tip of a perfectly good wood log go to waste or worse yet, be found by the competition. By the time it was lashed on the pickup the knarly snag stuck far out over the cab of the truck. It looked like the mast of a log laden pirate ship. Luckily it was downhill all the way home. Log trucks pulled off the road in awe and reverence as the tiny king cab swayed and swaggered out of the woods under the gargantuan load of seasoned wood rounds, the gnarly snag on top valiantly pointing the way home. Local folks referred to the scene as an ant carrying a hummingbird. Children playing in their yards ran for cover as the straining, grimacing Datson thundered by, causing loose berries to rattle off Juniper trees. She squatted down hard in the back and rose high in the front as if popping a permanent wheelie while hauling the glorious load out of the woods, the shark mouth mud guard wide and vicious and impressive as the tiny pick up creaked and groaned under it’s mammoth burden into my yard already buried in firewood.




One time during a particularly blizzardy day we went up for our second load and became engrossed in an Oregon Ducks football game that was on the radio. Previously Dougy had shown no inclination towards being a football fan. The Ducks were down by two touchdowns when we finally found a good tree. We were both hollering and cheering as we sat in the clear-cut and watched the blizzard go by the windshield. By the time the second overtime was over, the blizzard had subsided, Dougy had nearly cut a load of wood, I polished off a thermos of hot chocolate and the Ducks had won by one point. I had stayed by the cab to oversee the hearing of the game and to offer Dougy technical advice such as, “Hurry up, it’s starting to snow again!” It was a most memorable day. We were in our glory.




I will always remember the fall that Dougy helped me get my wood. But my memories will be bittersweet.




Three days before the fall equinox and one day before his fortieth birthday Dougy was killed in an accident while unhitching the trailer from his log truck. I was down at the church and the secretary told me she had got a call that Doug had been killed in an accident. I jumped in my pickup and tore up to Kenny’s shop as fast as I could, hoping that there had been some kind of mistake and praying that Dougy would come back. But when I got there and saw him I knew that he would never come back. So I held his hand and Said “Oh Dougy.” I couldn’t think of much to say. I asked him why. Then I told him goodbye.




Later, Kenny told me Doug wasn’t even supposed to work that day but he had offered to come up for a few minutes, just to help out. Dougy deserved to die a more noble death but it does not surprise me that he died helping somebody out. He was always helping somebody out.




Besides giving me a hand he spent his spare time getting little ol’ ladies free loads of firewood for the winter. I had accompanied him to unload some firewood at the little ladies homes, so now that I have this insatiable lust for firewood and I know where the little old ladies live, the job belongs to me alone.




Mt Vernon has lost one of her very finest. When I peer over the back fence and see his little home, dark and deserted and lonely, I feel very empty. I see his wood stack (that he had brought in last year) and the splitting maul that I had broke. (He fixed it) There is no smoke coming from his chimney. I try to understand. I stare at this paper. I try to understand. I grab an armload of firewood for the stove and I flat just don’t understand.




But life goes on.




Next fall while I am gathering firewood, alone, for myself and the little old ladies of Mt Vernon, I will invariably find myself with a hand axe beating on a snag and madly jumping up and down on the stupid thing in an effort to break it. Dougy will be in the presence of Jesus, laughing, and dancing in the arms of his sweet little wife. Some things in life are just not fair.