Who I’m Pretending To Be

Chuck quit his job at the Internet Café and went to stay with Woodrow in the high desert. At first he’d loved the work. Loved the hum of the row of G5s stretching down the wall, loved the late hours and the night-owl crowd, loved ordering witching-hour Chinese takeout. And the girls? So many girls, and the best kind. The kind that come out after dark to surf the web, where rules of time and space are very different. Sometimes he could sense the alternate reality leaking into the room, the ambient, infinite possibility. There were windows from which he could look out on the eldritch streets of China Basin. Old felt factories turned into tech firms. The shiny new baseball stadium. Dark little alleys with their own microclimates and subcultures. At dawn (which was the slowest part of the shift), when he wiped the desks, mopped the floors, cleaned the keyboards, mice, and screens, he could hear the many rumbles of delivery trucks, street sweepers, garbage collectors.

Then one day he’d had enough. The ceaseless undulation of the information age had worn him out. His nervous system was tired. He needed the dynamics of the countryside, which, if not static themselves, at least seemed governed by constant or comprehendible laws. Woodrow lived out on a sort of ranch collective. People boarded horses; some people had a few acres in vegetables; some of the old barn space was rented to a carpenter. Woodrow was the caretaker. He kept accounts and cleaned house and cooked dinner every other night. Chuck pulled up in the evening cool and Woodrow had a nice wall tent ready for him. An old canvas hunting tent with a little woodstove in it. Chuck threw down his sleeping bag and they drank whiskey and went to sleep.

In the morning they went to cut wood. It was one of the duties of Woodrow’s position, keeping a full stash of firewood, as there were no furnaces and using electric heat was too expensive. Chuck woke peacefully, the walls of his tent glowing in the fresh light. Woodrow had a mattress on the floor of an otherwise empty attic room. He slept with the radio on all night, and just out his dormer window was the perch the rooster chose for its morning salutation. Woodrow would open the window and poke his head out, and turning to the left he could see eye to eye with the cock, who would tilt his head at him before gliding back into the yard.

They filled a thermos with coffee and Woodrow raised his hand to the pocket of his plaid shirt to be sure his Grizzly chewing tobacco was there, and they made peanut butter sandwiches with the peanut butter a half inch thick. They put the sandwiches in an old tin Spider-Man lunch box along with four Oregon apples and went out into the sunlight. Woodrow checked the bar oil and fuel on the saws and gathered up some extra sharp chains and a combi can. Chuck double-checked the truck’s oil and tires. When he turned it over a whole covey of quail skittered out riotously from beneath, their plumes trembling. Chuck looked up to a chirping in the sky and saw a grey squirrel wrapped around a bird feeder stuffing her cheeks.

“We were trying to attract warblers. Or at least chickadees” Woodrow said, walking toward the truck with three saws, a Home Lite and two Husquavarnas, “but between the squirrels and the fucking jays.”

“I heard doves earlier.”

“Yeah they don’t seem to leave for the winter anymore. Climate change.” Woodrow glanced at the stand of Austrian pine trees beyond the truck. He’d planted the trees when they and he were very young and they’d grown up to thirty feet tall, some of them. In the old days when he smoked pot he’d wander the grove, peer closely at patterns of bark, smell the needles. He believed if you listen close enough, you can hear the trees singing. If you could hear that singing nothing could ever touch you. In recent years, however, he’d become somehow thrifty with his time. He stopped waltzing with the trees. He thought the experience was so well catalogued in his memory there was no reason to repeat it; there was nothing new to be had. Deep down, he knew what a massive personal failure this type of thinking represented; he’d sold out on the existential level, and when he looked at the forest now he felt remorse, but tinged with excitement, because someday he’d return to the trees, and they’d still be singing—that he knew.

The Dodge eased down the road past the stallion who sprinted back and forth along the fence with such fury he was forging a canyon in the pasture. The interior of the cab was warm and dusty and maroon, the glove box equipped with old gloves, maps, candy bar wrappers. Chuck pressed the tape adapter into the slot and put on Crystal Castles but after twenty minutes his Ipod ran out of battery and they listened to World Have Your Say and Talk of the Nation on National Public Radio.

Road 18 passed through a burn and then followed the edge of the ecotone, the perimeter of the forest where, due to the extremity of the rain shadow, there was suddenly enough moisture to support only sage and bunchgrass. At Bessie Butte they turned and drove south, gaining altitude and disappearing into thick expanses of Lodgepole, Jefferson, and Ponderosa. When the bright signs with chainsaws on them appeared, Chuck looked at the map and determined they were inside the cutting area. Woodrow eased off the accelerator and they began looking for wood.

Only down and dry Lodgepole was fair game, so they searched for that perfect combination of quantity (if they were always stopping for a couple rounds it would take all day to get even a couple cords) and proximity to the road. They rounded a corner and emerged into a wide swath of logging slash, and there on the rocky rim of the hill just above the road were crisscrossed piles of small to midsize trees discarded by the loggers or thinned by the Forest Service. They were between six inches and a foot in diameter. They pulled off and each donned ear and eye protection and started a saw, popping out the chokes and checking the tightness of the chain and then pulling the strings. They held the Husquavarnas up in the air and revved at each other for a moment before attacking the pile, like knights or samurai might cross swords to get the blood flowing. 

Half an hour later they were dragging logs down to the truck and loading them in. They didn’t cut anything into rounds or split in the woods if they didn’t have to. It was best to do as much of that at the ranch as possible, that way if something went wrong they were close to resources. Once the load was full Chuck tagged it and they sat on the hill eating the sandwiches and drinking the coffee. Woodrow imagined what aspect the forest floor would take if he were tiny. He watched ants crawling over woodchips, through the tangle of manzanita roots, into gopher holes. The Ponderosas gave off a scent of vanilla. From the hillside they could see across the tops of trees on the opposite side of the road, stretching so far they took on the appearance of a light green ocean, upon which cloud shadows sailed like dark green rafts, headed east. It was one of those volatile days. Hot and sunny, but at any moment threatening accumulations of clouds could sweep in, and with the elevation and the time of year it could easily start snowing. 

“I don’t know anymore, who I’m pretending to be” Chuck said. “Nor do I remember when I started pretending. More importantly, I’ve forgotten who I was before. Who I was originally. Graver still, I’ve come to doubt the authenticity of any such originality. Even the idea of the authentic or the original baffles me.”

“Sometimes I just stare out at my truck parked in the field. Just the very fact of its existence, it being there—it enthralls me. That’s when I realize that the very fabric of existence is so mysterious; you can’t really count on any grand framework of understanding. That applies to yourself as a subject as well as to all the objects you might regard. Anyway, I don’t know who you are either, if it’s any consolation.”

Chuck drove it in. They each packed lips of Grizzly and took the drive without speaking, listening to a presentation of Gustav Holst’s The Planets on the commercial-free all-classical radio station broadcast from the state university over the mountains. There was a repeater on top of a butte nearby, so reception was perfect. Halfway home Woodrow had to stop and shit in the woods, something he enjoyed so much his digestion seemed to speed up for it. He’d squat and listen to the birds and the whispering pines, and then, if it was still enough, he’d hear the silence and close his eyes.

Back at the ranch they pulled the truck around to the woodpile, cracked a couple cans of Monster, put Mastodon on the shop stereo, and unloaded. The shadows were beginning to lengthen, and they worked in a frenzy to beat the dark. They had everything cut into rounds in an hour and began splitting and stacking. 

A pale Plymouth minivan pulled up and two overweight middle-aged women got out. Chuck and Woodrow, absorbed in a splitting competition which sent beads of sweat stinging their eyes, didn’t see the ladies until they were right beside them. Chuck was suddenly self-conscious. The testosterone, the tattoos, the heavy metal, he assumed it must be offensive to these women who introduced themselves as Jehovah’s Witnesses. 

“It’s a confusing world isn’t it?” the driver asked.

“True that,” Chuck said; Woodrow nodded.

“It’s hard to find answers,” the other continued.

“No,” Woodrow said, “it’s too easy. There are too many. So many they clash against each other and only the questions are left standing.”

“That’s true,” the first woman said, “except there is one answer which always remains standing. Even if there are no more questions.”

“Lemme guess,” Chuck said.

“I’m already washed in the blood of the lamb,” Woodrow said, and smiled. His teeth had been turning yellow from all the coffee and nicotine, but in the last year he’d started bleaching them regularly and now they were pearly white.

“Well let us leave you with this.” One produced a pamphlet and offered it to Chuck. They shook hands all around, and the Witnesses left quietly as they’d come.

A pair of squirrels chased each other around a tree trunk. A troika of mallards, all drakes, landed on the pond and drifted swiftly into obscurity amidst the cattails. Red-tailed hawks hovered, hunting the prairie dogs in the fallow pasture to the east. Sometimes at the witching hour Woodrow woke to the howling of coyotes, and in the morning, when the grass was still bowing under the dew, he’d find great mounds of dirt where they’d dug down into the prairie dog dens and slaughtered them, pups and all.

“I have to work in town tonight,” he told Chuck when they had stacked the last of the firewood and the air was redolent with the smell of sap and evening, and the clouds were purple and the hills orange. 

“Let’s hit the pond then,” Chuck said, and instantly they both began tearing off their clothes and racing across the field, down the dock, and into the water. It was too cold to stay in long, as it had been snow only hours before.

They drove into town to an old general store, deli, coffee shop type place where Woodrow worked as a prep cook and barista. Chuck rode his skateboard around and realized that every third house or so seemed to have a live BBQ in the backyard. It didn’t take long before a guy in Carhardts introduced himself as Brig and invited Chuck in for an elk burger.

“Took this elk myself in the Ochocos last fall. Most of it’s been in the freezer since then.” They were listening to the Grateful Dead, “Eyes of the World” into “Me and My Uncle.” Brig had a cockeye, and a limp, and was one of those guys so good at just being himself, he was perpetually engaged and excited, and this made him magnetic. Chuck shivered in the northern air, and Brig’s face lit up.

“You just moved here, from the south?”

“You could say that.”

“Well, I’ve got a little welcome gift for you.” He disappeared for a moment and came back with a wool jacket, with a zipper and a hood, lined inside with something smooth to the skin. It had inside and outside pockets and was black and green.

“You can’t give me this,” Chuck said.

“Hah, I just did.” Brig smiled. Chuck put it on. Everyone clapped. “Got that from the Goodwill. Whenever I see a bomb coat for cheap I buy it, just so I can give it away. There’s nothing like a good coat. You know, a coat that keeps you just right. That’s a beautiful thing.”

The house actually belonged to Brig’s girlfriend, an Indian woman named Asha. Asha had this room beneath the stairs. You’d part the jackets and there it was: the nook. Blue shag carpet, Christmas lights. With the radiator near, it was always warm. They sat under there, Chuck, and Brig and two girls named Niki and Jess. The radiator clicked on and the space was filled with the sound of its humming. On the street, kids were flying by on bicycles. Jess was sleeping; Niki was watching her, watching her breathe. A dog howled. Niki looked at Chuck and told him with her eyes that Jess was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, a beauty so extreme it is almost sad. Asha opened the door and looked down at them, her hair falling around her face. She whispered, “It’s time,” and Niki ran the tip of her finger between the closed eyes of her beauty, and Jess woke up.

She had a French bulldog and she held it up the air and practiced her Hebrew. They ran down the street, past the elementary school, to the old church and the lot behind, where the barrels were lit and people were talking and smoking in the freezing night. One man was talking about Ducati motorcycles. Niki had a shrewd look, as though she had to know and understand everything. Jess was far away, her hood pulled tight about her head, her hands disappeared up her sleeves, her shoelaces untied. Chuck thanked Brig for the burger and the IPA and the coat and pushed back to the general store.

It was after midnight and they were closing up. A few night-owls were still drinking coffee or beer and talking or looking at computers. Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way was on the stereo and the lights were low. Woodrow and another clerk with a handlebar mustache beckoned Woodrow through the kitchen to the back, where they stood in the gravel alley smoking a joint. They didn’t speak but looked at each other in happy recognition of the fact that there was, really, nothing to say. Chuck drank coffee and read the local newspaper, imagining what it would be like to live in this town, until Woodrow was off, at which point they walked the few blocks back to the old church where there was a big bar, with fire places, pool tables, soaking pools, horseshoes, even flat screen televisions. Woodrow knew the bartender and they drank pints of PBR and took shots of Old Crow, won a game of cutthroat, then lost one to Niki and Jess, who Woodrow already knew, and drove home. Chuck decided it didn’t matter much, who he pretended to be, as long he liked that person.

At the ranch some of the cowboys and cowgirls were drinking whiskey from a big plastic jug around a bonfire. When the flames jumped Chuck could just make out the wall of his tent waiting for him beyond the aspens. They drank and eventually Chuck realized Woodrow was gone and the fire was dying down. He said goodnight and pissed and took a long draught of water and climbed into his tent. The air still smelled like winter at night, though in the morning, it was unmistakably spring.

He got up around high noon. It was the hottest day of the season so far. Woodrow was gone somewhere. He filled a mason jar with coffee from the big fifty cup urn and took his shirt off and baked in the sun. A thousand flies were lined up on the rail. Jets made Xs in the sky. A flicker banged away at the siding. Woodrow came back and they took shotguns and went out to shoot starlings and ground squirrels, the primary pests against which the ranch owners had declared war. They walked far out into the open flatness of the pasture. From there they could see all the snowy white volcanoes to the west and the arid red buttes to the east. The sky felt very close to the ground.

“Good to see you,” Woodrow said. Chuck smiled as he raised the twelve gauge to his shoulder, took aim, and pulled the trigger.

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