The Mountain Can Wait by Sarah Leipciger Read Free Book Online Page A

pelts. Less than a hundred years would go by before they came looking for gold, and now it was timber. Generations of men had spilled sweat and blood into this land to feed their families and build their homes, but you wouldn’t know it looking across the water to the mountains, with the three o’clock sun hovering above them.
    Tom parked his trailer at the tree line at the back of the clearing, farthest from the lake. He put on his heavy jacket and joined Nix back at the cook van. He scanned the area. They’d set up the same as every year: mess tent by the cook van, and next to that a dry room so they could air their gear when it rained. Between the mess tent and the cook van they’d place the water tank and pump and an area for washing dishes.
    The round, black ghosts of previous years’ fire pits still marked the middle of the clearing, like small moon craters. The planters would set up their tents among the trees at the north end of the camp, close to the water but protected from the wind. By the entrance road Tom would put the shitters and showers, the showers fed by cold water pumped up from the lake.
    “You ready for the new season, cook?” Tom asked, sitting next to Nix on the tailgate.
    “I can’t believe I’m back here cooking for these savages. You get out here and it’s like you never left. I had another job lined up, you know, in a real kitchen. In the city. Cooking for people who eat with clean hands and don’t go apeshit when you feed them lentils. I didn’t plan on coming back to this.”
    “Nobody ever does.”
    “Except you.”
    He smiled. “Why didn’t you take the restaurant job?”
    “You pay better.”
    “You aren’t going to cook anything funny this year, are you? None of that rabbit food?”
    She leaned into him and drove her elbow into his ribs.
      
    Tired of waiting for his foremen to arrive, Tom searched through Nix’s food supply, balancing bread, cheese, and an apple in the crook of his arm. He heard the sound of wheels crunching over gravel and prepared himself for the circus of Daryl Sweet; it was like going into combat. Sweet parked his truck alongside the cook van and rolled down his window, draping his arm over the door, his swarm of blond curls tied back from his face. Two veteran planters, a guy and a girl, jumped out of the back of his truck—half the number that Sweet had promised to bring to help set up camp. They unloaded their bags and planting equipment and waved coolly at Tom. Made jokes to Nix about her vegetarian cooking. They wore the garb of the tree planter: army surplus pants, dirty sneakers, gray woolen shirts and fleece. Steel-toed boots hung from the backs of their bags. The girl—her name was Penny—had dipped her blond dreadlocks into pink dye so that her hair looked like candy floss.
    This wasn’t their first time in the bush, but after a year away, they came back with clothes that were soft and clean, and with fresh hair and unbitten skin. Almost all the planters were on their summer breaks from university, and planting trees was how they paid their tuition. The grime would settle back into their skin soon enough, though, and they’d be comparing the consistency of their bush shits within the week. They collected their things and headed toward the trees at the north end of the clearing.
    “Go forth, my children!” Sweet called to them, his palm flat against the outside of his door. “Grab the finest tent pitches for yourselves! Be rapacious! For in two days’ time this place will be crawling with rats and rodents and other vermin of the vilest kind! And should you yield so much as one ounce of goodwill unto them, they will tear you from limb to limb, rip your tent pegs from the ground, and stick them so far up your asses you shall be eating them for breakfast!” He hopped out of his truck.
    Nix rolled her eyes.
    “Dudes,” Sweet said, still with the hint of a childhood lisp. “What do you think of this fat bastard?” He pointed to a