Death Spiral by James W. Nichol Read Free Book Online Page A

felt like he’d suddenly been jerked back about a foot. “Explain the will.”
    “Well, I don’t know, but I bet there’s an explanation that doesn’t include Adrienne O’Dell and Frank Cruikshank drowning the old bugger.”
    Explain the man in the backyard, Wilf felt like saying. Explain Adrienne O’Dell’s eyes.
    * * *
    The chain slowly drew the squared-off timber into the saw. The saw began to scream. Duncan was getting impatient. The job was taking longer than he’d thought. He hadn’t had his supper yet. Neither had Eric, the teenager who lived on the farm next door and helped out whenever Duncan needed an extra pair of hands.
    Eric was crouched down watching the taut chain for slippage and pushing at the huge timber with an iron-tipped pole. Duncan was at the other end holding on to an inch-thick plank as it peeled off the main piece of timber. Seventy-five planks in all. Six to go.
    Duncan eyed the remains of the timber they were ripping. He could usually get ten 1” x 8” planks sixteen-feet-long out of a good-sized piece of white pine. He was either going to be one plank short on this one, and then he’d have to half kill himself getting another log set in place, or it would come out just right. He’d dress the full order of seventy-five planks down to exactly eight-inch widths in the morning. That was a job he could do himself. He liked working by himself, but some heavier jobs required the help of Eric, and other jobs required a whole crew.
    His mother had had no problem getting a crew of men together when she’d needed one, mainly the hired help off the nearby farms. And years before that when his father was alive he’d had two full-time men on the payroll. But times had changed. There weren’t many hired men working on farms anymore, for one thing. And the factories were booming; there seemed to be good jobs everywhere. Duncan didn’t have the faintest idea how to hire a crew of men.
    After Mrs. Getty’s funeral all the neighbours had wondered how Duncan would make out being left alone in that tidy frame house with its lumberyard to the one side, the shop, the stable and forty acres of bush at the back. That was three years ago and to everyone’s surprise Duncan seemed to be making out more or less all right. His mother’s old customers were going out of their way to give him small orders to fill, which he managed either by cutting out a few trees from his own bush or from time to time hiring on to help mark and cut trees out of some neighbour’s bush lot, taking half-pay and keeping a few extra logs for himself. It was all working out, which seemed a kind of miracle to anyone who could remember the odd-looking boy he used to be, hurrying along the backroads at any time of day or night, eyes bright as two lights, nose continually running, breathlessly heading toward a destination no one else could see.
    His mother had to admit back then that she could never keep Duncan in the house, but that was many years ago. The only thing anyone could say against Duncan these days was that he had a tendency to get drunk in public places. He was a harmless, good-natured kind of drunk though, wrapping his huge arms around anyone who made the mistake of getting within range and seeming to look younger the drunker he got until finally that same little boy’s face would shine out of his almost grownup one, a young boy’s face full of a dreamy and dazed wonder.
    Duncan turned off the saw. He didn’t have to set another log. The seventy-fifth board had peeled off successfully, leaving behind only the thinnest sliver of rough timber. Eric took off for his home a mile up the road, walking quickly through the cold night. Duncan went into the back kitchen, kicked off his boots and hung up his saw-dusted coveralls just as his mother had taught him to do.
    He pushed through another door into the main kitchen, turned on the light and looked around. And just like every night, he couldn’t help but feel proud.