“Course, I don’t expect you to last out the morning, but we got a stretcher handy.” I grin over at him. “That boy of Orland’s is handlin’ the other line...he can take over when you fall behind.” He looks like he’s being ordered up to the front lines, standing all at attention and his jaw set. I’m intending to kind of kid him but, try as I may, I can hear myself sounding just exactly like old Henry doing some first-rate ass-chewing, and I know I couldn’t pick a worse way to talk to Lee. But I’m damned if I can stop it.) “You ain’t gonna like it at first. As a matter of fact you’re gonna think I’m givin’ you the dirtiest end of the dirtiest stick on the whole operation.” (And he wouldn’t of been far from the truth.) “But it can’t be helped. The easier jobs, the machinery jobs, it’d take too long to teach you and they’re risky even when a guy knows what he’s about. Besides, we’re hurting for time. . . .” (And maybe that right there is why I couldn’t help sounding angry, because of knowing just how tough setting choker was going to be on a tenderfoot. Maybe I really was trying to be extra tough and was hacked at myself for loading him with it. I do that sometimes . . .) “But one thing: it’ll make a man of you.” (I just don’t know. All I know is I thought I was relaxing a little around him, then tied up, the same as I tied up trying to talk with Viv the night before, explaining our deal with Wakonda Pacific. Same as I tie up with anybody except Joe Ben; and me and him didn’t really have to talk a whole lot . . .) “If you can make it through the first few days you’ll have it whipped; if you can’t, well, you just can’t is all. There’s lots of other niggers can’t cut it neither and they ain’t all in Dixie.” (I’ve always had a tough time trying to talk to others without barking. With, say, Viv, I’d start out trying to sound like Charles Boyer or somebody and come off, every time, sounding like the old man telling Sheriff Layton how to deal with the boogin’ Reds in this country, how to take care of them Commy bustards right! And believe me, sounding like that is sounding pretty damn hard. When old Henry got going on the Reds he could really come on fierce . . .)  “But all I ask is you give it a fair go for a while.” (Because Henry always claimed he was convinced that the only thing worse than Reds was Jews, and the only thing worse than Jews was high-and-mighty niggers, and the only thing worse than the whole lot of them was them goddamned hardheaded southern bigots he was always reading about. “Oughta poison everybody south of the Mason-Dixon line...’stead sending Northern tax money down to feed ’em . . .”) “So if you’re ready, grab hold of that piece of cable and drag it here. I’ll show you how to look for a choker hole. C’mon, snap out of it. Bend down here an’ watch . . .” (I wouldn’t argue much with the old man myself, mainly because I didn’t know Reds here in America, and didn’t feel much one way or the other about uppity jigs, and was just a little vague about what a bigot was...but I tell you, for a while him and Viv used to really lock horns about just that very subject, that race business. Really get into it. I remember... well, let me recall the thing that stopped the whole business. Let’s see . . .) “Okay, now, you watch this.” Lee stands with his hands in his pockets while Hank explains the job with the slow patience of a man who is explaining something once and it had better be picked up because it isn’t about to be repeated. He shows Lee how to loop the length of cable over a fallen and bucked log and how to hook the cable to the big line that runs in a circle from the pulley at the anchor stump to the rigging at the top of the spar. “. . . and when you get it hooked you’ll have to be your own whistle-punk till things level out. We’re too short-handed for such luxuries. You savvy?” I nodded and Hank went on outlining my duties for the day. “Okay, listen.” Hank gives the cable a kick to make sure it is secure, then leads Lee up the slope to a high stump where a small wire runs in a gleaming arch to the donkey puffing and clanging seventy-five yards away. “One jerk means take ’er away.” He pulls the wire. A shrill peep from a compressed-air whistle on the donkey sets the tiny figure of Joe Ben into action. The cable tightens with a deep twanging. The donkey engine strains; an outraged roar; the log lurches out of its groove and goes bumping up the hill toward the yarder. When the log reaches the spar they watch Joe Ben leap from the donkey cab and scuttle over the pile of logs to unhook the choker. Then one of Orland’s boys creaks the neck of the yarder forward, like the skeleton of some prehistoric reptile painted yellow and brought fleshless to life; Joe Ben gouges the tongs into each side of the log and jumps clear as he waves to the boy in the yarder cab. Again the gigantic piece of wood lurches and is jerked into the air as Joe Ben hustles back to the donkey controls. “Joe’s bein’ his own chaser. It’s tough on him, but like I said, it can’t be helped.” By the time the yarder has pivoted and swung the log onto the bed of the truck and nudged it into place, Joe Ben is back in the donkey and the cable is reeling back out again. It comes snaking through the brush and torn earth toward the place where Lee and Hank stand waiting. I listened, hoping Hank would explain more about the task, cursing him for presuming he needed to explain as much as he had. We were standing alongside each other at the “show,” going through last minute instructions before my big First Day . . . (Viv, see, spends a lot of her time reading and is up on a lot of things—that’s trouble right there, because there’s nothing in the whole world makes old Henry madder than somebody, especially some woman, having the common gall to be up on a lot of things he’s already got opinions on . . . so, anyhow, this once, they got into it about what the Bible of all things says about this race business . . .) They watch the cable draw nearer. “Then, you see, when the choker gets close to where you want it, give her two jerks.” The whistle peeps twice. The highline stops. The choker cable hangs shuddering in its own dust. “Okay, watch now; I’ll set it one more time for you.” (The old man, see, was claiming the Bible said the spooks were born to be bondservants because their blood was black like the blood of Satan. Viv disagreed a while, then got up, walked to the gun case where we keep the big family Bible with the birthdays in it, and went to flipping through with Henry just aglowering . . .) When Hank has repeated the procedure he turns to Lee . . . “You got it now?” I nodded, determined and dubious. Brother Hank then took a wristwatch from his pocket and looked at it, wound it, and returned to the same pocket. “I’ll check with you when I can,” he told me. “I got to see abou............