Free Riding The Whirlwind by Darrel Bird Page A

to leave him be, and safer too.
     
    He was at the one pump filling station the
next morning as Ron Nash pulled up in his old Chevy pick-up.
     
    “Get any work yet Paul?”
     
    “Nah. You got any?”
     
    Ron Nash was a logger, a simple man who did
hard work snaking trees out of the North Western forests.
     
    “I hear Ryder is looking for a choker setter,
why don’t you scoot on down to their office today before someone
else gets it?”
     
    “I have never set chokers Ron, I wouldn’t
know how to begin.”
     
    “If Ryder takes a liking to you, they’ll show
you.” He shot a stream of brown tobacco juice at a bug crawling on
the gas pump and missed.
     
    “Ok, I’ll go down and see him, and thanks
Ron.”
     
    “Its ok, I know what it is to try to feed a
family. See you at church this Sunday?”
     
    “I don’t know, I might.” The depression had
rolled on leaving its dregs of emptiness, hopelessness and
frustration.
     
    Ron spat another stream and hit the bug,
contemplated his aim for a minute then cranked his truck and drove
off. The bug scratched and slid down the gas pump as it struggled
for traction in the spit.
     
    Paul pulled in to the Ryder logging office
and yard, which was a trailer, set on concrete blocks out at the
edge of town and looked around at the logging trucks sitting idle.
Grass and weeds were doing their best at reclaiming cast off
equipment.
    The loggers had been hit hard by the economy,
government regulations and the tree huggers who wanted to stop them
from logging. City slickers from Portland and San Francisco who had
never done a days work in their entire life went around the country
yelling about the spotted owl and chaining them selves to tree’s.
He knew nothing about logging accept to avoid the logging trucks
entering the highway with their loads, but he knew if he didn’t get
substantial work they would be on the move again with even less
than they had gotten there with, which was nothing, but what a
broken down station wagon could carry.
     
    Paul hated the cities, only the most
desperate of circumstances could drive him to them and he was
afraid of cities like Los Angeles. He shuddered to think of where
they might end up as he opened the door to the Ryder logging
operations office.
     
    Ryder himself was sitting at a beat up desk
piled with papers, maps and coffee cups, a grizzled man of about
60, his bearded and wrinkled face told of the years in the
weather.
     
    “Well close the damned door, we got enough
skeeters in here already.”
     
    “Yes sir.” Paul closed the door gently behind
him and approached Ryder’s desk, the door creaking back open behind
him.
     
    “You have to slam it. I been meaning to get
it fixed.” Bill Ryder had been saying that for fifteen years.
     
    “What can I do for you son?”
     
    “Ron Nash said you were looking for a choker
setter.”
     
    “Can you set chokers? You don’t look like a
logger to me.”
     
    “No sir, I’m not a logger, but I’m willing to
work.”
     
    “Setting chokers is hard work son, it ain’t
no place for a panty waist up there. I had a good choker setter and
he up and moved to Idaho. The son of a bitch left without a
word.”
     
    “Well sir, I’m willing to work if you will
give me a shot. I need this job.”
     
    “Family man Huh?”
     
    “Yes sir.”
     
    Ryder pursed his tobacco stained lips and
leaned back in his chair, “You say you know Ron Nash and he put you
up to coming out here?”
     
    “Yes sir, he belongs to my church group.”
     
    “He’s a good man.”
     
    “Yes sir, he is.”
     
    “Well…if he sent you I’m going to give you a
try, you be here at 4 in the morning and the boys will take you on
up there. The pay is fourteen an hour.”
     
    “Go out there and find old Ed Brubaker, he’s
out there working on that red rig and tell him I said get you fixed
up with some cloths and a hard hat and my name ain’t sir, its Bill,
now get on outta here.”
     
    “Yes