Comes a Time for Burning Read Online Free PDF Page B

Art
didn’t
finish the cut. After cutting into the top of the horizontal crown’s bole for ten inches, he slipped the saw out of the top cut. He hung motionless, feet braced against the spar’s sides and one hand looped affectionately around the log above his head to give his belly and back some relief.
    Then, shifting his position around the spar, slightly away from the crown, he hefted the double-bit axe and with his torso contorted so he could hit the target, made short work of the V-groove, relieving the notch as much as he could.
    “WHOOOHOOOO!” he whooped, letting the axe’s keeper slide through his hands until it hung free. “That’ll work,” he said, obviously more to himself than anyone else. Working his way back until he was beside the horizontal crown, he positioned the saw on the bottom of the trunk, sawing rhythmically for a full minute before stopping. He left the saw in the cut and drew himself back to the spar.
    “That’s a tussle,” he said, his words again meant for no one in particular. He said something to the other logger, who immediately started down the spar. After another moment’s rest, Art repositioned himself, the saw’s soft voice resuming. Start, stop, start, stop. Progress was painfully slow, the awkward, twisted, laid-out position against the safety rope impossible to hold for long. Thomas recalled sawing firewood with his father in Connecticut, and he could imagine that this western spruce, fresh, knotty, and gummy, was actually far more difficult than cutting eastern hardwood.
    The other logger reached the ground and unclipped his belt. “Need wedges,” he said, and in a moment, he secured four heavy iron wedges to a draw line. He stood at the base of the spar, gazing up, then shook his head and walked toward Bertram.
    “He wants me off it until the crown goes,” he explained. “I told him that I needed to hang on to old Sonny, but he said he weren’t goin’ nowheres. He’s got him belted and spurred in pretty good.”
    “How much wood do you got on either side of the split?”
    The logger held his hands at least a foot apart. “Somethin’ like that. Damn thing runs right down the center of the bole. It’s got ’em good.”
    A shrill whistle jerked up a score of heads.
    “You all stand there,” Art shouted down, “and you’re gonna be wearin’ this thing.”
    “About where your horses are hitched,” Bertram instructed Thomas. Then Art set to work, the sawdust clouding below his furious sawing. Thomas watched through the lens, and could actually see the saw cut, just a faint line against the bark at that distance, begin to gape. The top cut closed, and Thomas saw Art reach up with his left hand, hugging the crown on the stump side of the cut. Twisting like a contortionist, he drove the big saw hard, and then down below the spectators heard a single sharp crack. For an instant nothing happened, and then the saw dropped out of Art’s hands as he hugged the stump with both arms. The crown popped and snapped and broke free, a giant, lazy candle of limb wood.
    Because the logger had cut it off four feet out from the spar, and because its top was so securely snagged, it swung straight down to crash into its neighbor, a giant pendulum swinging away from the spar. Its top splintered and let go with a string of reports that sounded like rifle shots. Broken loose and falling, the crown’s uppermost limbwood kicked back toward the spar, sweeping it like a giant broom half way down the stump. With an explosive crash, the crown settled in a storm of limbs, bark, and needles.
    Art’s cry of triumph rang across the bluff. The spar’s arc of release snapped him and the trapped Sonny Malone through forty feet of open air. With the weight of the crown removed, the remaining stump stub above the dynamite line gradually eased upward to a forty-five degree angle. And as it did so, Thomas imagined, the split closed some more. Art released his hug around the bole and swung up,