“I can’t sell to contractors that WP failed to fill contracts for if you guys go back to work and—” “Oh man, don’t you see, Floyd?” The material was too rich for Joe Ben to stay out of. He popped into the circle of light, his eyes blinking glee. “Don’t you see? Oh yeah. See. If we break our contract so you get your contract then they can meet their contracts with the contractors that you are saying we can contract to if we—” “What? Wait a minute—” Hank was trying to keep his amusement from becoming even more obvious. “Joe Ben means, Floyd, that if we let you guys go back to work we’re eliminating our market.” “Yeah, Floyd, see? Oh, I admit it’s deep. If we let you cut their lumber, then our lumber we aim to sell to them . . .” He took another breath and tried to start anew but gave way to a snorting explosion of laughter instead. “Screw all this,” Floyd growled. “. . . or if we let you keep our lumber”—this was the sort of material that could keep Joe going for days—“from becoming their lumber so your lumber can become their lumber—” “Screw it.” Floyd hunched his shoulders against the lantern light and clamped his jaw. “Just screw it, Joe Ben.” “You can always sell lumber,” Draeger said simply. “That’s right!” Evenwrite saw an opportunity to regain lost ground. He took Hank by the arm. “That’s why I say screw all this bull. You can always sell lumber.” “Maybe...” “Goddam you now, Hank, be reasonable. . . .” He drew a deep breath in preparation for another assault on Hank’s stubbornness, but Draeger cut in abruptly. “What are we to tell the people in town?” Hank turned from Evenwrite; something in the tone of Draeger’s question stripped the situation of humor. “What are you gonna what?” “What are we to tell the people in town?” Draeger asked again. “Why, I don’t care what you tell them. I don’t see—” “Are you aware, Hank, that Wakonda Pacific is owned by a firm in San Francisco? Are you aware that last year a net of nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars left your community?” “I don’t see what skin that is—” “These are your friends, Hank, your associates and neighbors. Floyd tells me that you served in Korea.” Draeger’s voice was placid... “Do you ever think that the same loyalty that your country expected of you overseas could be expected of you here at home? Loyalty to friends and neighbors when they are being threatened by a foreign foe? Loyalty to—?” “Loyalty, for the chrissake . . . loyalty?” “That’s right, Hank. I think you know what I’m talking about.” The soothing patience of the voice was almost mesmerizing, “I’m speaking of the basic loyalty, the true patriotism, the selfless, openhearted, humane concern that you always find welling up from someplace within you—a concern you might have almost forgotten—when you see a fellow human being in need of your help. . . .” “Listen...listen to me, Mister.” Hank’s voice was taut. He pushed past Evenwrite and held his lantern close to Draeger’s neat-featured face. “I’m just as concerned as the next guy, just as loyal. If we was to get into it with Russia I’d fight for us right down to the wire. And if Oregon was to get into it with California I’d fight for Oregon. But if somebody—Biggy Newton or the Woodsworker’s union or anybody—gets into it with me,thenI’m for me! When the chips are down, I’m my own patriot. I don’t give a goddam the other guy is my own brother wavin’ the American flag and singing the friggin’ ‘Star Spangled Banner’!” Draeger smiled sadly. “And what of self-sacrifice, the true test of any patriot? If you really believed what you say about yourself, Hank, you would be in for some pretty shallow patriotism, some pretty selfish loyalty—” “Call it whatever you want, that’s the way I intend to play it. You can tell my good friends and neighbors Hank Stamper is heartless as a stone if you want. You can tell them I care just as much about them as they did about me layin’ on the barroom floor last night.” The two men held each other’s eyes. “We could tell them that,” Draeger said, still smiling sadly at Hank, “but we both know it would be a lie.” “Yeah, a lie!” Evenwrite burst out of his angry reverie. “Because, goddammit, you can always sell lumber!” “Christ Almighty, yes, Floyd!” Hank turned on Evenwrite, relieved in a way to have someone to shout at again. “Sure I can sell lumber. But wake up and die right! use your damn head! Look!” He grabbed the flashlight from the still laughing Joe Ben and shone it down at the surging river; the black water eddied about the beam of light as though it were a solid pole. “Look at that push down there! Look! After just one day of rain! You think I can wrestle those booms of mine through a winter of this? I’ll tell you something, Floyd, old buddy, to make your trip worth while. Something to make your damn constipated heart burst out singing. We just might not make that deadline, you ever think of that? We still got another half-boom to fill out before we make our run. Another three weeks, and some of it the shittiest type logging in the world; we go up in the state park to finish off with. Steep logging, goddamn hand-logging! just like they did sixty or seventy years ago, because the State won’t let us bring cats and donkeys in for fear we might skin up some of the goddamn mountain greenery. Three weeks of flooding and primitive logging, an’ we’re liable to fall short. But we’re gonna work our asses at it, ain’t we Joby? And you boys are welcome to stand there and talk about men, women, and children, friends and neighbors and loyalty and that crap till the cows come home, stand there and talk about how they are gonna lose their TV sets this winter, and how the poor folks got to eat ...but goddammit I can tell you this, that if they eat it’s gonna be for some reason other’n me, or Joe Ben or the rest, some reason other’n us playin’ Santa Claus! Because I don’t give a goddamn! for my friends and neighbors in town yonder; no more than they give a damn about me.” He stopped. A cut on his lip had reopened, and he licked at it gingerly. For a second, in the circle of the lantern’s saffron light, the men waited. No one looking at the others. Then Draeger said, “Let’s go” and Floyd Evenwrite said, “Yeah, back where there’s still some brotherhood in this world,” and they picked their way in the dark back along the plank. Behind them Evenwrite heard a choking laugh start up again—“Break our contract to meet your contract so we can sell”—and heard Hank join in the laughter. “The toplofty cocksucker,” he said. “He don’t know it yet, but he’s real due to be broug............