Author’s Note:
This a fragment of short story I wrote back in the the late 1980s. It's the setup for a series of short stories that I intended to sew together into a novel, but I never did.
These stories contain violence, crimes, drugs and explicit homosexual acts. Back in the early days of the Internet, I was afraid to post them. I write most comfortably in the first person and feared that the stories would be
construed as a confession to crimes.
Homosexuality was a crime in Montana back then.
As I stitch these stories together, I'm jumping around through time. Here is a link to a scene that happens two years before this story: Missoula Montana, 1987
It was one fucking huge machine. Even standing out on the road outside the ring of chain link fences and the line of sheriff deputies, the noise level pounded us down. Clustered around the eleven story metal building, the maze of conveyors, pipes, railroad tracks and truck-clogged roads fed the giant machine called the IdaMont & Pacific Pulp Mill. Tons of cardboard along with dioxin-laced effluent, air pollution and pro-timber harvesting propaganda flowed from the mill every day.
I felt incredibly small standing beneath the tower of steam piling above the factory like an angry thunderhead. The plume reached into the sky and then sagged east and sank as it approached town eleven miles southeast.
Eighteen of us chanted and held signs and banners. "Earth First! Earth First!", angry voices rendered virtually inaudible over the din of the mammoth machine. Eleven men and seven women, holding banners that vilified the corporation for logging atrocities committed not just in our local forests, but throughout the diminishing old growth of the Northern Rockies.
I stamped my feet a bit, feeling the cold seep into my joints, a dull ache that faded to numbness toward my toes. I surveyed our meager crew dressed variously in darker colors, layers of salvaged clothing and all-natural fibers. Somewhat out of place, a couple of the guys sported fancy new coats from the REI racks. Skiers? Regardless of clothing selections were all hippie radicals in the cold: I wondered if we kept moving and chanting for the protest or in a futile attempt to keep warm. Protests in single digit temperatures have never been a good idea.
I knew only about a third of the protesters that day. There were three fancy parka guys from Oregon, Eugene, I think and a couple women from Arcata, California. The rest of the crew were locals; students from the university and townsfolk.
I looked over at my buddy, Nathan. He stood about six three with long dark hair to his shoulders from under a green knitted toque. His beard and mustache, clotted with frost from his breath, gave him a distinctly yeti appearance. Nathan was a striking powerfully built man. He was formerly a sawyer and union rep at this very company’s mill in town. Now he held one leg of a large banner that shouted a crude epithet at his former employer.
Nathan had followed his father into the timber industry. He and and his father worked for the same locally owned mill. There used to be eleven saw mills, the particle board plant, the plywood plant and this pulp mill, all with different owners. Now IdaMont owns them all. Nathan's dad got injured on the job just after IdaMont took over. They laid him off. He died about a year later. That's when Nathan became the sawyers' union rep.
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On the other end of Nathan's banner stood Molly, Nathan's girl friend. I'm sorry, I cannot describe her in kind words. She swooped in and grabbed Nathan like a hawk plucks a mouse from a field, except she lacked the grace. I've really tried to like Molly, but she won't even meet me halfway. She won't meet anybody halfway, I suppose that's why she makes a good environmental activist. I don't understand what Nathan sees in her: she must be a good fuck, that's the only explanation I can think of. She always seems mad and find can find fault in anyone’s best intentions. She’s a waitress and a very effective and fearless bouncer at the Top Hat downtown.
I suppose my negative attitude toward Molly may have something to do with the fact I had fallen in love with Nathan. I guess I was jealous that she sleeps with him and I don't. I would think that after all these years I would have learned not to fall in love, yet again, with a straight man.
Nathan knows I'm queer. I made it clear to him two years ago when we met at Luke's, the local biker bar. We used to meet there and go through a couple pitchers talking about forest ecosystems, life and sex. He said that I was the first queer man that he had ever knowingly met. He seemed to be intensely curious about it, but quite clearly made it known that his interests were in women. I remember one night we started pointing out potential partners for each other in the crowd. We got pretty good at judging each other's preferences, although it eventually degenerated into finding the least likely people. The two of us haven't gone out together since early last Summer, not since Molly pushed her tits between us.
I watched the frost in Nathan's beard as he shouted the current chorus at the cold unmoved building. He looked so serious, as if he thought he really could cause the building collapse with just his voice.
Blasted suddenly from my thoughts by the horn of a chip truck, I refocused on the protest. The driver flashed us a peace sign before flipping us off as he slowed for the approach to the security guards at the front gate.
I followed the progress of the truck as it crawled past the sheriff's finest and the rent-a-cops. I scanned the pasty shaven faces of the cops and thought of how the cold must feel on a chin as clear-cut as the forests after IdaMont visited. Their dark blue uniforms and stiff attitude made them all look factory grown, harvested and shipped here in boxcars by the pallet full. Mists of steam from their breath puffed from their mouths mimicking the gray mill behind them. What toxins did they exhale?
"Earth First! Earth First", shouted our crew.
Far in the background I could see the chip truck pull up onto a large metal pad. A crew of workers swarmed like ants around it as the driver jumped out and presented papers to a man with a bright plastic hard hat and a clipboard. Everyone moved away from the truck as one end of the the metal pad began to lift. The cab of the truck angled upward as the shredded forest began to pour out from the rear into some underground repository and conveyer system. It kept lifting until the truck stood an angle; a giant eighteen wheel erection protruding from the end of a corrugated metal building.
Man, it was too cold to be doing this today. I caught Nathan's eye and stepped up to him saying, "I'm freezing my fucking ass off!"
"You got a shit-load of ice in your beard, Otter's got that deathtrap heater in his van doesn’t he? Wanna go warm up?"
Without waiting for a response, Nathan called over to Kathy and offered his leg of the banner to her. As soon as she took his post, he started moving out of the group. As I turned to follow, I saw Molly glaring at us as if we were abandoning a battle. Molly let her end of the banner sag and watched us go while the group rallied into another round of shouting.
Nathan and I trudged along the frosted asphalt at the edge of the road toward my roommate Otter's van; an old battered Econoline with "Full Metal Tent" scrawled in spray paint on the side. We climbed up to it, slid open the reluctant side door and climbed into the dim interior. Not tall enough to stand up in, I walked stooped over to an old milk crate and sat while Nathan pulled the door closed behind us. A stubby propane bottle sat near the rear doors with a short stem pointing straight up from the valve. On the stem, a sunflower-shaped radiator hissed quietly with a dull reddish orange glow. Nathan leaned over to the radiator and turned up the gas; it flared for a moment and then blasted heat toward the center of the van. He sat back on another milk crate next to me while I pulled off my gloves and flexed my fingers in the radiant heat.
After a minute of silence listening to the distant sounds of the chanting and shouting, Nathan said, "I'm surprised we got so many to come out -- oh, shit," Nathan barked, interrupting himself, "the roof vent isn’t open." He reached up and flipped the tab and pushed the roof flap open.
"Deathtrap heater," I said quietly as I flexed my stiff fingers close to the flame.
Nathan reached out and touched my pale cold fingers. "Jesus! You're like ice, why did you wait so long?"
"Incredible devotion to the cause," I quipped with a deadpan voice while meeting his eyes.
“Those guys from Oregon seem pretty hardcore. I think they expected us to storm the gates.”
“The guy with the fancy parka, I think he’s got gun,” I said.
“Jesus, what the fuck?”
“They rode here with Otter and me. We picked them up at lot under the bridge next to the Wilma. They didn’t want to bring their car. I think I saw him pull it from the glove box and stash it under his coat.”
"What kind of gun?"
"Fuck if I know - the kind that shoots bullets?"
“Christ. Well, we’re not gonna be here much longer, it’ll be getting dark soon."
"Where did Sheriff Blubaugh get all the deputies?”
“Those aren't Blue Ball's guys, they're IdaMont's"
"Ugh, duh. Of course they are - the county doesn't have the budget."
“Who are the girls from California?”
“Kathy's friends, I don’t think they wanted to be here - not the right clothes for the cold. They’re at Kathy’s place up the Rattlesnake past Greenough park. Winter break from Humbolt, I think"
A loud thump against the rear of the van interrupted our conversation. The van rocked and we both looked to the propane heater as it wobbled, but settled upright.
I moved to open the sliding door to see what happened, but Nathan's stopped me with a strong arm. "No!" he barked, "the passenger door, it faces away from the mill."
...
Author’s Note:
The excerpt stops here because I’m unsure if I want to post the upcoming violent scene in the story. There’s about 30 pages of this written.
Do I post it online, or do I sit on it and let it vanish when I die?