He sat at the motor, grim and trembling. No one spoke, no eyes looked. And for a third time I experienced that feeling of combative elation that a long-shot challenger must feel when he notices a small but decided limp in his massive opponent’s seven-league stride. (The whole blamed trip. Just sitting there like a lump, trying to find the toehold to start with, trying to figure some way of working up to all the things I got to say, all the things I got to ask. But I can’t make it. I introduce him to John when we pick him up in front of his shack, and John’s able to get a hell of a lot more going with him than me. It seems they’re both big on Seven Crown. John offers him a slash from the Thermos of the stuff he always carries, and they talk about how it is with a little coffee added. They got a common ground. Even Orland’s three boys do better than me. When I wake them up from the rear end of the crummy truck and introduce them to Lee they’re able to shoot the bull a few minutes, asking him questions about New York and what’s it like, before they go back to sleep. Even them lugs. sometimes a great notion I pour it to that old rattletrap. We’re running a little late, what with waiting breakfast on the kid. The sun’s already coming through the trees. We head out up Blueclay Road toward the North Spur of Breakneck, where the show is, and after about a half-hour bouncing and bumping and nobody saying word one to nobody else we get up to the site. The slashing piles are still smoking from yesterday’s burning, and the sun’s rose out of the branches and is promising to make a long hot sticky sonofabitch of a day of it. I slide out from behind the wheel and go around and open the door and stand there stretching and scratching my belly while the truck empties, kind of not looking at him. “What do you think?” I ask Joe Ben. “Did we or did we not come up with a fine day to welcome old Leland Stanford home to the woods?” Joe, he tips an eye up for a check with his Big Time Weatherman just to be sure and says, “Oh yeah! Maybe get a little on the toasty side before the sun sets, but the way I look at it all the signs point to a day with a heart of gold. Ain’t that the way you read it, Leland?” The boy is shaking like a dog shitting peach pits, still cold from the river ride. He frowns over at Joe like he isn’t sure whether he’s being spoofed or not, then he grins and says, “I’m afraid I failed to take any courses on astrological signs, Joe; I’ll have to trust to your interpretation.” This tickles Joe to pieces. Joe digs big words, especially when they’re aimed at him. He giggles and spits and goes to hauling out all the paraphernalia for the day—maps and hard hats and “Boy, be sure an’ take these gloves!” and candy bars and snuff cans and pocket knives, and, naturally, the little transistor radio he keeps near him all day—passing them around like a munitions officer issuing arms before a big battle. He hands Lee his hard hat and goes prancing around, tilting his head this way and that to get a good look at the way it sits, saying “Um . . . oh yeah ...say there... wait ...here we go,” and fooling with it till he gets it settled the way he wants it. Then he starts giving Lee a rundown on what to expect and what’s happening and what to look out for working the woods. “The main thing,” Joe says, “oh yeah, the mainest thing . . . is, when you fall, fall in the direction of your work. Conserve 200 ken kesey yourself.” He demonstrates how to conserve yourself by doing a couple of nose dives as we amble along. “The whole notion of loggin’ is very simple if you get onto it. It comes to this: the idea is to make a tree into a log and a log into a plank. Now, when it’s standin’ up vertical it’s a tree, and when it’s laid down it’s a felled tree. And then we buck it into lengths of thirty-two feet an’ them lengths are logs. Then we drag them logs acrost to where the truck is and lift ’em up onto the truck an’ then the truck drives ’em down to the b............