The Oregon Experiment by Keith Scribner Read Free Book Online Page B

back, if she’d be more resilient, happier, if she’d need him less.
    Gazing back at the towering, page-high photo of last year’s Mr. Douglas, bearded and rugged, an ax over his shoulder, he rubbed the stubble already on his chin. There were two divisions, amateur and semipro, the ad said. Contestants were encouraged to sport Oregon Trail beards, plaid shirts, and logging boots. He had the wrong glasses, the wrong hair, completely the wrong look. But like his anthropologist friend who lived in a Bolivian village in a dirt-floor hut, eating guinea pigs and learning the local dialect, Scanlon was going native.
    That night, just before eight, he climbed a flight of stairs that rose steeply from the sidewalk between the Rainy Day Café and the Birkenstock store. The polished wood floor of the Odd Fellows Hall tilted toward the front of the building, where red and yellow yoga mats were stacked in the corner. Pushed back against them were an electric guitar, a drum kit, and a cardboard cutout of Jeff Bridges as the Big Lebowski, Scotch-taped where it had been torn. In the opposite corner, a pair of desert combat boots stood at the base of a waist-high cross, an army helmet placed on top, dog tags dangling below. Floor-to-ceiling palladian windows with green fluted columns looked out over the street. A lot had gone on in this room—an old building for Douglas, built in 1898, according to the facade. Like a frontier hotel or a vaudeville hall, the scrappy elegance had been maintained through the century with glossy paint and floor wax and smears of spackle on the plaster cracks.
    By 8:10 the room was getting crowded. Scanlon sat toward the back in a folding chair. He’d anticipated the pot-bellied hippies with wiry gray hair and their twenty-something counterparts—tie-dyed, dreadlocked, slung with infants—but not the waitresses, plumbers, and mechanics of the uniformed working class. He hadn’t expected the blazers and ties either, on men with neatly trimmed hair and starched collars. When two loggers from central casting walked in, he felt ashamed of his three-days’ worth of whiskers. A dozen healthy tan faces chomped green apples and handfuls oftrail mix. There were a few Native Americans and several large bunches of Hispanics, two or three different groups of Asians speaking their own languages—Chinese, Korean, Hmong, he guessed. A black couple with a young son playing his Game Boy. Two headscarves and a turban.
    At twenty after—still no urgency about starting the eight-o’clock meeting—conversations around him showed no sign of flagging: kayaking, fly fishing, homeschooling, doulas, the end rot on everyone’s tomatoes, a good chimney man, a phone number for organic mint mulch composted for at least two years, another number for grass-fed beefalo. He decided this was a complete waste of time and was heading for the door when a stocky, bearded man thrust his bear paw in front of him. “Hank Trueblood.”
    “Good to meet you.” He shook his hand. “Scanlon Pratt.”
    “Haven’t seen you at the meetings before.” Trueblood was in his fifties, drinking black coffee, rocking on the balls of his feet. “New in town?”
    “About a week.”
    “Where you from?”
    “East Coast.”
    “What brings you to Douglas?”
    “The university.” It was starting to feel like an interrogation. “How about you? Are you from here originally?”
    “Born and raised.”
    “What do
you
do?”
    “Douglas Fire Department. I’m the chief.”
    A public-employee secessionist: was this a potential angle for an article?
    “Let’s do it, people!” came calling over the din.
    “Hey,” Scanlon said. “I’d love to talk more. Let’s grab a beer.”
    “Any time, professor.”
    Scanlon returned to his chair. Professor? He was sure he hadn’t mentioned that. The chief was now up front, holding the elbow of a statuesque woman and whispering in her ear. She’d draped a hand over his shoulder and, still listening, slowly